


Charmberry Cove

by CoreCurious



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Cults, Demons, F/M, Ghosts, Kidnapping, M/M, Magic, Multi, Murder, Violence, just a buncha different creatures and cryptids, magic played by my rules, not biblical demons though more like unlimited power and no weaknesses type of deal, stupid ass cult
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-01-03 11:51:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21178967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoreCurious/pseuds/CoreCurious
Summary: Charmberry Cove is not placed on any maps, it's not recorded in any government files, it may as well not even exist, and to most of the world it doesn't.The small town is sheltered by a wall of forest, mountain and sea and the only way in is if it allows you to enter.Guarded by it's own laws, magically and otherwise from the outside world the citizens of the town aren't all 'normal'.Virgil moves to his Dad's hometown when his Grandmother passes, he soon finds out that magic exists and nothing is as it ever seems.He makes friends and fun times are to be had, but when townsfolk start to go missing our group of boys uncover secrets of the town and are thrust into cults and conspiracies.Like the town wasn't weird enough.





	1. New Places New Faces.

He was being shaken awake from his impromptu nap, he didn’t even realise that he fell asleep, but he supposes it _was_ a long car ride.

“Hey there Pumpkin King, wake up kiddo.”

That would be his dad talking, well one of two of them anyway.

Emile Picani, therapist and cartoon enthusiast. And like, one of the best dads ever, the other being his other dad, obviously.

Virgil blinks slowly awake, staring at his dad, “how long have I been sleeping for?” he asks, rubbing his eyes and yawning.

“Not long, just under an hour I'd say, ya didn't miss much” he smiles at Virgil, patting his head. “Now go put Hex in your room, I'm sure she's restless after being cooped up in that carrier most of the ride down.”

Virgil shuffles grabbing the cat carrier and climbing out of the moving truck.

He goes to open the front door, but of course, it's locked. He looks back to Pops, who is opening the back of the truck to assess their belongings with a hand on his mouth his finger tapping his lips, the other on his hip and a thoughtful expression on his face. Virgil walks up to the truck to stare with him for a moment; they have a lot of stuff.

“Hey, Pops. The door is locked” he mumbles out. Emile startles then looks disgruntled.

“Oh darn it, I don't know if I have the keys” he looks thoughtful, then snaps his fingers. “I'm gonna have to text your father and see what he did with those keys of ours.”

Virgil watches as his dad climbs back into the drivers seat of the truck to get his phone, sitting there texting Remy.

He stands there for all of thirty seconds before Dad pulls up on the street in front of the house in their car.

That was fast, but Dad always has weirdly great timing.

“Anybody order some keys?” He says, getting out of the car and taking a sip from his travel mug of coffee. He hands Virgil a purple key with the handle in the shape of a cloud and the number 618 etched into it, there was also a lightning bolt going down into the keys teeth. Clearly he got the keys personalized; he wouldn't be surprised if Remy himself had a key handle shaped like a coffee mug. Dad hands Pops his key, Virgil notices that it's shaped like Finns sword, he smiles at his pops’ unabashed squeal of delight at this fact.

Virgil walks up to his new home, the 618 on the side of the front door in bold black and gold.

Well here it goes. He unlocks the door and steps into his new house, taking it all in. It's nice, is his first thought, his second thought is on how big it actually is, it looks smaller from the outside and considering that it's a townhouse, which is to say it's connected to other houses made it seem like it might be smaller than it really is.

Being at the front door he can practically see the whole first floor, it being very open spaced and bright from the large windows.

The front door leads straight into the living room, and separating that in the back is a half wall and a breakfast bar that goes into the kitchen, with a sliding door into the back yard.

The kitchen itself is a nice size, no doubt that Dad is going to have a good time experimenting in it.

The stairs off to the side of the living room and close to the front door lead upwards, with a door set on the side of the staircase itself and Virgil hopes that it leads to a basement.

Shifting Hex's carrier to be more comfortable, he steps towards the door intent on opening it, and he's not disappointed when he does, cause it does in fact open up to a staircase leading down.

Descending the stairs and flicking on the light at the bottom reveals the basement in a low glow, off to the right side is an area for a washer and dryer to be hooked up and at the far end in the right corner looks to be a small bathroom and in the left corner he's met with a larger looking room with a closed door.

A door that Virgil learns is unlocked and ready for exploration, it turns out that this door leads to a cozy sized room that’s probably for storage and the like, noting the high ceiling with rafters, the stone floor and lack of windows.

He immediately claims this as his bedroom.

Closing the door he lets Hex out of her cage and sits on the floor to look around more. There are a couple outlets to plug stuff in and there’s a single light that swings from the rafters that throws shadows around.

Definitely not made to be a bedroom.

He likes it even more.

He sets out all of Hex's amenities and petting her before leaving to go help with the boxes and such; closing the rooms door so she doesn't get underfoot while they move about.

When he gets back upstairs he blinks in confusion at the living room that now has a large amount of furniture and boxes scattered around, he didn't think that he was downstairs that long, but apparently he was.

“Hey bud, find your room alright?” Remy asks, lounging on the couch his shades perched on top of his head nestling in the waves of his hair his piercing eyes on rare display; the shining turquoise is almost hypnotizing.

“Uh yea, the um, the basement has a room in it, I like that one” he replies while picking at his hoodie sleeves.

Dad chuckles “of course you'd choose the dungeon for a room.”

He heaves himself off of the couch, ruffling Virgil's hair as he instructs his son “alright then, Phantom of the Opera, go bring your things into your room, that's all you need to help with.” He heads up the stairs yelling out to his husband “hey Babes, it seems like you've acquired that office, Virge wants the basement room.”

He hears a knowing muffled laugh of 'of course he does', it seems like they had this conversation already.

He goes to the truck to check on what to do first and decides on bringing all the large garbage bags filled with clothes and bedding to leave the boxes and heavier things for last.

~

He huffs and wipes his hands together, the bags were easy enough, though there were quite a few of them so he takes a short break on the front steps, letting his mind wander to other things, like how his new school is going to be. This town doesn't have a large population to begin with, so he can't really imagine the student body population to be much either (not nearly as much as his old school does.) He thinks that this whole town wouldn't fill his old school.

He gets distracted from his thoughts as another teen, about his age bounces towards him with a dog following by his side.

“I didn't know someone new was moving in!” He happily chirps at Virgil. Virgil just stares at him, not exactly knowing what to say in this situation. “Oh”- the kid laughs out, face palming -“where are my manners?” He thrusts his arm towards Virgil for a handshake. “I'm Patton” he brightly announces “Patton Sanders, I live two doors down that way,” he points to the right of himself.

Virgil nods, taking the outstretched hand and Patton beams at him.

Giving his own smile, though shy and not as open as Patton's he mumbles out his own name. He doesn't think Patton heard what he said, but looking up at the other boy he sees that Patton doesn't have any annoyance in his features, only a calm encouraging smile that trails into his eyes, the warmth he sees behind the thick black glasses puts him at ease.

It feels almost like Patton himself is pushing all the comforting feelings towards Virgil on purpose, and he finds he's not as anxious as he usually would be around someone new.

So he clears his throat to introduce himself properly, in an octave the other can actually hear him in.

“Virgil, um... Virgil Tempest.”

Patton's eyes widen and he claps his hands together.

“Oh! Like Tempest Coffee? Ms. Tempest is so nice and she makes the best cookies! I've always wanted to know what she does to make them that good!” He excitedly gushes it makes Virgil smile at the enthusiasm.

“Yea, exactly like Tempest Coffee, though I'm pretty sure Dad is going to change the name” he offhandedly mentions.

Patton tilts his head to the side he looks confused but quickly jolts like he was shocked; his eyes shine with sadness and guilt.

“Oh my gosh! That was so insensitive of me” he gasps out his hands flying to cover his mouth. “I am so sorry Virgil, I completely forgot, I guess my brain hasn't caught up to the fact that she's gone yet.”

And now Virgil made Patton sad with just _being_, cause of course he did.

Great, off to a good start with the neighbours then.

“It-it's okay, I didn't really know her. If that makes you feel better” he mumbles out that last part, shrugging.

Patton looks uncertain for a second and then plasters a smile onto his face, exuding that same calming feeling from before.

“She used to send me birthday gifts and weirdly enough, Halloween gifts too. That was as far as our relationship went” he looks confusedly back at Patton's own confused look “what?” he asks, enunciating the whole word.

“You don't celebrate Halloween?” His nose scrunches up with his confusion; it's adorable.

“I do” Virgil says slowly. “But, it's kinda weird to get presents for it no?”

Patton shakes his head.

Well then. Just him he supposes.

“It's not at all weird around here, Halloween is kinda a big deal in these parts” Patton says then asks: “what do you usually do then?”

“Well, you know. The usual, trick or treating” he ticks off his fingers as he goes down the list. “Dressing up, going to strangers houses to beg for candy, horror movie marathons, eating too much candy and then ditching school the next day cause, honestly, it was_ just_ Halloween.” He has a lopsided smirk as he says: “I love it, it's my favourite holiday.”

Patton nods along to all of his points.

“Well, we do all that stuff here too. Just more” he starts bouncing in place clapping. “Oh, you're gonna love it here if it's your favourite! The whole town goes up in lights and we have_ fireworks_! Fireworks at the beach! And and and everyone participates in this amazing barbeque! And there's fun activities to do all 'round town, it's a spectacular event! Oh oh oh and and! There's a couple days off of school for all the festivities! And it's just so much fun!” Patton's excitement radiates out that his dog joins in on his bouncing. “I am so glad that I can show you all the cool stuff for the first time! This is so exciting!” He claps a couple more times.

Virgil can feel the excitement smash over him like a tidal wave and he can't help the large smile that spreads across his face as he watches Patton clap.

With a new sense of adrenaline Virgil decides that his break should be over and that he needs to get back to work on these boxes, he says as much to Patton.

“You want some help?” The other asks so genuinely it throws Virgil through a loop. “I'm sure you'll get so much more done with some help” his offer is so honest and pure all Virgil can do is nod.

Patton bounces in place once more “Oh, I need to bring Foster home but I'll be back to help you lickity split!”

Virgil watches as Patton practically skips home with Foster bounding at his heels, he opens his front door Foster goes in with one word. Patton waves at Virgil as he closes his door again, then skips right back to Virgil's side.

Well, it seems like moving his stuff isn't going to be as gruelling as he thought it was going to be.

Virgil gets up off of the steps as Patton reaches him, both turning towards the truck.

“Alright tell me what I'm bringing and where to put it” Patton exclaims, Virgil motions towards the boxes off to the side of the truck, some inside of it some outside so he instructs Patton farther than his hand wave gave.

“All the ones to the left are mine, if you don't know what to grab all my boxes have my name on them. And you can bring them... Um.” Is Patton going to think he's weird if he tells him his room is in the basement, willingly, in a room that's not meant to be a room? He looks to Patton from where he was focusing on boxes only to see curiosity and kindness on the others face. “Um, the basement. That's where my room is.” Patton just nods and walks with Virgil inside his house, and then down the stairs.

He's pretty trusting of new people huh?

Patton goes to open the door to the room but Virgil stops him just before he can turn the handle.

“Wait don't open it yet!”

Patton freezes in place at Virgil's panicked tone.

“Sorry” Virgil winces, “I can't let the cat out yet though.”

Patton's eyes go wide and excitement bubbles up in him once again.

“You have a cat!?” He breathes out with a slight high pitched noise following.

Virgil nods amusement colouring his face. He puts the boxes he was carrying down and goes to open the door while Patton puts his own box down.

The boys scurry into the bedroom, closing the door hurriedly behind them.

“You like cats I'm guessing?” He asks as Patton gets on his knees in front of the small black cat, and he nods frantically as she climbs on to his lap.

“I love them” he says as he cradles her to his chest, “I'm super duper kinda allergic to them though” he says lightly and Virgil startles at that.

“Stop rubbing your face on her then!” he shrieks, waving his hands around as Patton giggles.

“But she's just too cuuuuuuute Virgil!” He whines as he hugs the cat to his face.

Virgil splutters with a pained look on his face.

“But, your allergies...” he says lamely.

Patton giggles once more “worth it. She's too cute.”

_Sigh._

“Yes, yes she is.”

Patton looks up, “what's her name?” He asks innocently, like he's not going to regret this whole situation.

“Hex” he answers, Patton smiles down at the cat.

“Well, she's gonna fit right in with that name.”

“I suppose so,” Virgil agrees. “Now stop killing yourself with my cat” he opens the door to enunciate his statement.

“Fiiine, bye bye Hex” he coos to the cat.

~

They get a couple more boxes downstairs before Dad stops them on their way to go get more.

“Who's your new friendo there Virge?” He asks his shades are back on his face sheltering his eyes from the outside world he’s sipping on an iced coffee; eyebrow raised.

“Uh, this is Patton he lives two doors down. That way” he adds pointing to his left. “Patton this is one of my dads.”

“You can call me Remy hon” he addresses Patton, then addresses them both “you boys hungry? I've got lunch sorted out, and Patton you are so welcome to join in on this sweet-pea.”

“That sounds great Dad” Virgil sits at the breakfast bar, Patton following suit.

“That sounds super, thank you Mr. Remy.”

“Oh God none of that 'Mr' crap around here kid, just Remy is fine and dandy” he finishes his sentence with a long drag from his straw.

Dad sets a sandwich in front of both of them and a plate of cookies in between them and then hands them both a soda before leaving to go upstairs.

They eat in silence for the most part, until Patton takes a bite from a cookie and gasps out loud.

Oh no, Virgil panics. Did his dad somehow mess up on this recipe that he knows by heart and accidentally poisoned his only friend?

Tears, there are tears coming from Patton's eyes, and Virgil has no idea what to do about this, his panic sky rockets and Patton immediately stops his stray tears and seems to force a lighter aura around his being.

Virgil would define this as 'emotional whiplash' on how that happened so fast.

“Are, are you okay?” He asks in concern (and maybe a little confusion.)

“Yea, it's- it's just these taste _exactly_ like how Ms. Tempest makes them an it threw me off guard, I didn't think I'd ever get to eat them again is all” he softly says as he stares sadly at the baked good.

“Well,” Virgil starts “my dad is her son, so he knows all her baking secrets and tricks so you'll definitely be able to eat them” he smiles at Patton's soft expression.

“So, she's your Grandma then?” Patton asks.

“Yea, did... did you know her well?”

Patton smiles “yea, I went over to the cafe a lot to help her out.”

“Oh, that's nice.”

“Mmhm. It was fun.”

“Woah, what's with the mood in here?” Pops asks as he walks into the room, “It's like you just found out Bambi’s mum gets shot” he says brightly while grabbing a soda from the fridge.

Virgil's eyebrows shoot up to his forehead in surprise.

“Woah Pops, a little dark there.”

Emile stops, stares into nothingness and turns to Virgil with a serious look on his face and a tone to match.

“I've been spending too much time with your father.”

And then promptly walks out.

“How long have they been together?” Patton asks.

“Um, since like, collage...”

Neither of them can contain the loud laughter that comes.

~0~

Patton is genuinely happy in this moment, helping Virgil out with his boxes.

They just delivered the last one to Virgil's room.

Remy had already carried and put in the bed, shelving, dresser and desk while they ate lunch.

Well, that's what he said he did. But Patton didn't notice anything being moved, it's not like the staircase is out of their line of vision.

Remy is an odd character, just like his mother.

Patton can't get a read on him, just like with Ms. Tempest.

Nothing came from her, and nothing from _him_ now too!

And come to think of it, he couldn't feel anything from Virgil's other dad either.

It was confusing.

If he can't read the person then it's harder to decide what emotion to put out there.

Virgil on the other hand, was more of an open book, if only slightly more.

Roman would probably call him 'dark and mysterious' and if Patton didn't know better, so would he.

“Hey” Patton pipes up while they're walking upstairs so he can go home “what grade are you going into?” He asks hoping that he'd finally get a friend in his class.

“Seventh grade” Virgil responds, dashing Patton's hopes.

“Cool, you'll be in Roman and Remus' classes then! And maybe some of Logan’s too, his classes are probably going to be sporadic cause he's so smart that he skipped a grade! So he probably will be in most of your classes if not all, although he's so smart that he might have some eighth grade classes too, hopefully cause that'd be super duper neat!” He realizes that he’s been rambling when he gets a look from Virgil. “I'm sorry, I blab too much sometimes.”

Virgil waves off is worries “it's alright, it just means that _I_ don't have to” he smiles at Patton and his heart soars at the emotion that smile sends him.

His ranting doesn't bother Virgil. He finds it endearing if Patton's reading it right.

“Anyway” he says as he steps out of the house “I'll see you soon yea?”

Virgil nods “the next time you see my room, it's going to be awesome.”

Patton smiles he waves goodbye to his new friend and bounces all the way to his front door then yells out to Virgil: “I can't wait!”

And he can't.

He can't wait to tell Roman about the 'dark and mysterious' boy who he will most undoubtedly get along with.

He couldn't wait to tell Logan about his new friend that has a quick wit and silver tongue when he's not all tied up in his own thoughts, oh the debates that they'll probably get into.

He can't wait to tell Remus about the darker parts of this boy and watch their friendship bloom from that simple shared fascination.

_He couldn't wait._


	2. Brothers

“Remus!” Roman yells while storming into his twins room, who is lounging in the middle of his floor drawing something and also wearing Roman's hoodie. _That_ is exactly why he's here. “Stop stealing my clothes!” He flails his arms towards his brother in emphasis.

“Hmm, no_p_e” Remus says popping the 'p' and not looking up from his drawing. Roman huffs, gesturing even more frantically at the other.

“Are you wearing my pants?”

“Maybe.”

“You are insufferable. What else do you have of mine?”

“Lots of stuff.”

Roman stares Remus down, hands on his hips waiting for him to crack. Which he doesn't because he never does it's like he's impervious to being intimidated.

“Stop. Stealing. My. Clothes” Roman enunciates after the glaring doesn't work, and that finally gets Remus to stop ignoring Roman's protests.

He stops drawing his head slumps towards the floor and groans. “Uuuuuuuuugh, but Rooo_oooo_.”

“No. No '_but Ro_' me mister! We've been through this” he stomps his foot as if to drive his point home.

Remus slowly raises his head, looking up at Roman with a pout; Roman admits that he cracks a bit at the look.

No, he needs to stay strong in his decision darn it!

“Too bad” Remus announces.

Roman steps back half a step making an incredulous noise, he can't believe he almost just felt sorry for his trash goblin brother.

“Rude, you are a rude heathen is what you are” he says crossing his arms.

“Well I don't have many clothes of my own yet that are comfortable enough for me to wear right now, so deal with it Broman.”

Roman falters in his resolve.

“Fine, but start asking first” he says as he saunters to his brothers side he sits next to him on the floor.

“We should go shopping” he decides.

Remus continues his drawing and hums “you should tell that to Mom. Look at my drawing!” he thrusts the sketchbook at Roman, who of course takes it; they are each other’s best critics after all.

He stares at the pencil sketch, blinking at the image. It's good? It's weird. But that is the norm for Remus.

“What am I looking at here?” He asks pointing at a jar? Of some sort on the page. “Are these eyeballs?'

“Yep! It's based on my dream last night” Remus informs, Roman nods and points to something else that might be a tree.

“What exactly is this?” He asks and Remus lights up.

“That's a hand tree, it's very _grabby_” he says while making slow grabby hands, smile wide showing off his neon braces in full display.

Roman recalls when they got their braces maybe under a year ago, a couple months before their twelfth birthday; the doctor said that they'll probably have to have them for a couple years.

When asked what colours they wanted Roman chose to go full rainbow for his tooth accessories, and that is how he's choosing to think of them as.

Remus yelled out in the doctor’s office that he _needed_ his to be glow in the dark neon green and they actually had that as an option much to Remus' delight.

They annoyed Roman for the longest time, still do honestly.

Remus took a weird liking to them immediately though, he said that the feeling was 'funny' and he liked the 'aesthetic' of them, whatever that meant.

Roman just thought that they hurt and took up too much space in his mouth.

Shaking himself out of his thoughts and still staring at his brothers dream picture.

“This is one for The Wall then. Do you need to add any colour to this one?” he asks.

Remus snatches the sketch book back “yea, red!” he replies.

Roman nods, a lot of his dream pictures tend to only have red in them.

As Remus fills in the parts that need red, Roman stares at The Dream Wall. That's what they call the wall that Remus' bed is against, the wall itself is filled with pages upon pages of sketches, on all types of papers in differing colour schemes, from full coloured ones to black and white sketches. Most however only have red accents to them.

“We should go shopping today, I'll ask Patton and _Looogan_ if they want to come with us” he smirks at his brothers now watching eyes.

“Logan too? He doesn't like shopping.”

“Mm, but he's our friend and he'd probably enjoy it nonetheless” he says as he takes out his keyboard flip phone. His first phone, Mom said that they should be able to get in touch with her and each other just in case, so they both got one two months ago for their birthday. Patton and Logan already had phones, Patton got his first one a while ago; Thomas always likes to know where his baby brother is. And Logan is very responsible so his parents didn't see why not.

“How much allowance money do you have?” Roman asks.

Remus slowly looks to him.

Roman sighs.

“You _have_ been saving up like we said we would right?”

“Yes?” Remus says sitting up “but probably definitely not as much as you have.”

“How much do you have?”

“Maybe fifty bucks.”

Roman sighs again. “We've been saving for months, what have you been spending it on? Never mind I don't wanna know” he puts his hand over Remus' open mouth.

“We'll just go to the thrift store then” Roman decides as Remus licks his hand to make it move from his face. “Oh ew, you so _did not_ have to slobber on me” Roman whines, Remus laughs but otherwise ignores Roman's pout.

“You say that like we weren't going to go to the thrift store to begin with.”

“Shush you! I need to text our friends!”

Remus sticks his tongue out at him, going back to adding red to his drawing.

Opening his text option he sends Patton and Logan their own texts.

**Pattycake:**

**-Hey Puffball, me and Rem want to go thrift shopping today, care to join us?**

**Logos:**

** -Hey Nerd! We wanna shop wanna come along?**

Logan is the first to reply to Roman's text, he usually always is the fastest to answer; he doesn't like having backed up messages.

**Logos:**

_ **-I am sorry Roman I cannot make it today, I am otherwise engaged in an activity with my parents. Perhaps another day?** _

“Pff, the little nerd is out” Roman informs Remus, he sees him shrug from the corner of his eye as Patton’s reply comes in.

**Pattycake:**

_ **-aww! that sounds like so much fun! but i cant im helping a friend move. maybe tomorrow if you wanna wait for me?** _

**-Helping a friend move?**

_ **-yea! ill tell you guys about it tomorrow okay? i havta go.** _

**-Alright, have fun with that.**

“That's weird, Patton is helping his friend move?” The concept of Patton helping a friend move isn't what confuses Roman, he can see it perfectly well, Patton helps anyone he can. It's just that... Who is there to move?

“Who's moving?”

“I have no idea, but he said that he's down to do this shopping thing tomorrow, so I'll just text our nerd back and inform him of that.”

**Logos:**

**-You're free tomorrow right, wanna come then?**

_ **-Affirmative, that sounds adequate. I shall see you tomorrow** _

For someone who is '_otherwise engaged in an activity_' he sure answered that quickly.

And now that that's settled, they're going shopping tomorrow.

If they can get a ride to the next town over that is.

“I'm gonna go ask Mom if she can drive us tomorrow” Roman says, getting up and dusting himself off.

Remus ignores him being fully concentrated on the gore splattering his page his tongue caught between his teeth as he tries to get a blood puddle the right tones of red.

He leaves his brothers room to look for their mother, which was rather easy considering she's sitting at the kitchen table.

He stands in the doorway to the kitchen, looking at her work, she shuffles some papers around.

“What do you need sweetheart?” She asks without taking her eyes off of the page she's scowling at, then sighs and puts it down. “I need a break, want some lunch? Do you know if your brother is hungry?”

He shrugs, “probably, but I came down to ask if you can drive us to the town over for some shopping tomorrow?”

She sighs as she gets some sandwiches ready, “I'm sorry My Little Prince, that's almost an hour long drive and I have to work all day tomorrow, I need to get this out to my editor by Monday.”

Roman nods “it's alright Mama, I'll figure something out.”

“Oh hey” she perks up, “I know for a fact that Thomas is doing absolutely nothing tomorrow, why don't you ask him?”

Roman's cheeks pink a bit. “Great idea Mother, I shall text Patton to ask him for us.”

She hugs him as she hands him two sandwiches, a bag of chips and two water bottles.

Roman bounds up the stairs with the food, and freezes in Remus' doorway.

“_What_ are you doing?” He asks his twin who just so happens to be halfway out of his bedroom window, he’s backwards and upside down, his legs holding on to the windowsill.

Roman sets the food on the bed and rushes to hold Remus' ankles.

“Hanging out of the window!” Remus yells.

“Yes, I can see that but _why_?”

“Why not?” Remus rebuttals.

“It's dangerous to start with. You can seriously hurt yourself is why not!” He scoffs honestly, Remus really needs to stop giving Roman heart attacks, he might actually kill him with it one day from what he puts Roman through.

“That's why I have you silly!” Remus flails his arms up towards Roman as if that was the most obvious thing.

“What?” Roman asks.

“Well, you'll always be here to help me, you're The Prince, you'll always save me” he states matter of factually.

Roman's chest squeezes at his brothers pure faith in his capabilities and assurance that they'll always be there for each other.

“Okay, well take this as me saving you right now then and get inside here and away from the window, we are on the second floor you _absolute heathen_.”

Remus laughs out as he begins to pull himself up, but just falls back down and his laughter doubles after Roman hears a _thump_.

“Hey Ro? I can't get up.”

Roman stares at his brother in disbelief before his own laughter escapes him in peals.

~0~

The next day has come and Remus is excited about the days plan. Usually he doesn't care for shopping, too much waiting around and too many rules to follow. But this is with his friends and that's a whole different situation.

And fucking around in thrift stores is fun.

Jumping out of bed and pulling on Roman's hoodie that he was wearing yesterday back on is as much as he's gonna get dressed considering he slept in yesterday’s pants, so he's good for today.

Banging on Roman's door proves to be amusing for him and annoying for his twin. Roman opens the door, clothes and hair dishevelled an annoyed look across his face.

Remus waggles his eyebrows “you got someone in there Ro?”

“You just woke me up you idiot. It's too early to leave what are you doing?”

“What? No it's not, it's almost ten! Get dressed bitch. Or don't, either way” he shrugs.

“Don't let Mom hear you swear” Roman mumbles sleepily and adds “Thomas said he'd drive us after lunch.”

He pushes his way past Remus to get to the bathroom and closes the door before Remus can utter anything else.

Fine.

Logan is probably awake, he'll just bother him.

**Lego:**

**-Hey BiTcH you comin with today yea?**

_ **-Good morning Remus, yes I am indeed going to be 'chilling' with everyone today. ** **I informed Roman of this yesterday, did he not pass on the information?** _

**** **-Sweet! Just confirming! I'm bored Roman is being boring entertain meeeeeeeeeee**

_ **\- Roman is one of the least boring people I have ever been in the presence of. ** **Though I guess that could be said for all of you. I don't know how I deal with it.** _

**-Shuuut up you love uuus!**

_ **-Quite.** _

_ **-Are you sufficiently entertained?** _

**-why got somthin somthin to be doin over there?**

_ **-Not at this very moment I do not.** _

**-ThEN keep talkn to me nerd, tell me nerd stuff**

_ **-Very well. What would you like to know today?** _

Remus thinks on this, he and Logan do this often when Remus needs a distraction, and Logan is always glad to rattle off some knowledge, especially if he's highly fascinated by the subject matter. Logan can make anything interesting anyway, it's in the way he enunciates with hand gestures and how he explains things.

Remus can listen to nerd shit for forever if Logan was the one talking. It just calms his thoughts.

**Lego:**

_ **-Do you have a subject matter you wish to know about or would you like me to just tell you random facts?** _

**-OH HOW ABOUT old torture methods!**

_ **-Ah, that is actually very fascinating to look at through the ages.** _

_ **-Would you like me to break it down for you or just fun facts for today?** _

**-FuuuuuUN fACts!**

_ **-Very well. Did you know that one method was to take an elephant, getting it to slowly ** **crush ** **all the bones in ones limbs before inevitably crushing the person’s skull? Very babaric.** _

**-Was that a Babar pun?**

_ **-I, what? No. It was simply a typo.** _

**-I won't tell Paaaaatton your secrets saafe with me**

They text back an forth like this for a while. Logan telling him facts on whatever Remus' mind jumps to in that moment.

Roman walks into the living room where Remus is lounging upside down on the couch with his feet up in the air.

“Is Mom gone?” He asks rubbing a towel through his wet hair.

“Ymmmhm” Remus answers he’s not really paying attention to Roman, he has the stuff Logan is sending him to read.

“You talking to _Looooogan_?” Roman sing songs while setting his arms on the back of the couch to lean on them, looking at Remus expectantly with his eyebrows raised.

Remus kicks him in the head.

He was literally (metaphorically) asking for it, standing in the exact right position for Remus' foot to connect to Roman's head.

“_Hey_!” Roman squawks, “I just took a shower I do _not_ need your grody feet in my hair!”

“Well you shouldn't be in kicking distance now should you” he shoots at his twin.

Roman huffs, walking out of Remus' sight into the kitchen and comes back with a muffin. For both of them, well that's nice of him.

A muffin _thwacks_ off of his forehead, making him drop his phone on to his face. His phone and the muffin are now on the floor and Roman is in the background laughing his ass off.

Okay, not nice of him then.

He throws his body to the side and flops off of the couch to grab both items. Double chocolate muffin though, score.

“Thomas will be here in an hour or so” Roman informs him.

He wiggles his eyebrows “you been talkin to _Thooomas_ a lot lately brother dear? How _scandalous_.” He puts his hand to his mouth in mock shock.

Roman splutters “Ugh. _Ugh_, Remus. Please. He's basically Moms age. And for your _information_, it’s Patton that's been informing me so _ha_!”

“Doesn't mean you don't have a cruuuuuuush” he sings.

“_Shut_ up. Go get dressed.”

“I am dressed.”

“You wore that yesterday!”

“Your point?”

“You. Wore that. Yes. Ter. Day.”

“You can't repeat yourself to prove a point.”

“I can if that's my whole point! Which _it is_ cause I can _not_ believe that I need to say it more than once to prove it!”

Remus rolls his eyes “no one caaaaaaaaares.”

“Logan would” Roman mutters.

“Give me some clothes then.”

“Wha- bu- _euhhhuuuhuhh_.” Roman whines out articulately.

“I'm kidding!” Remus says brightly and Roman relaxes. “I'm not changing” he says in a more serious tone and Roman deflates and whines again.

~

The hour-ish goes by pretty quickly, with Roman putting on where they left off from Full Metal Alchemist and about halfway through the third episode that's playing the doorbell rings.

The twins open the door to Patton’s smiling face.

“Heya guys! You ready to go shopping!” He bounces in place, giving off waves of pure happiness. Well he's extra happy today, and everyone would have noticed even if he didn't have his gift.

“Hell yea!” Remus shouts loudly as Roman locks the door behind them.

Logan is already seated in the back of Thomas' car and Remus gets in before Roman could so he can sit next to him. Patton climbs into shotgun so he can be in front with his brother.

“Hey guys” Thomas greets them as they buckle and settle in the seats.

“Thomas!” Roman crows “how's my favourite theatre teacher?”

Thomas chuckles “I'm not your teacher yet Roman, school hasn't started.”

Roman scoffs “it starts next week, we're practically there.”

Thomas starts the car and drives out of their driveway.

Its funny watching Roman's attempted flirting with Thomas, cause he so doesn't know what he's doing and Thomas obviously doesn't reciprocate so it just goes over the older man’s head every time Roman tries.

There's mischief in Thomas' eyes and Remus isn't the only one who catches it, he shares a look with Logan then glances to his brother to see his reaction, no doubt it'll be hilarious.

“Well Roman” Thomas begins and Roman perks up, “how do you even know that you'll be qualified for theatre?” He asks 'innocently'.

Patton snickers at his brother and lightly slapping his arm. “_Tommy_” he softly chastises.

Roman makes the loudest most offended noise Remus has ever heard him make; and they live together.

Logan smiles and Remus loudly chortles at his brother’s expense.

“I'm kidding Ro, I'm sure your audition will blow everyone’s socks off” Thomas says to calm the spluttering prince.

“I'm insulted that you even need me to audition, hasn't my whole life been enough of an audition for you?” Roman says flippantly.

“I can't _play_ favourites Roman” Thomas says.

Patton giggles, “pun intended?” He asks.

“Of course” Thomas replies.

Roman perks up “I'm your favourite?” He asks giddily. Remus snorts, Roman elbows him.

“He just said he didn't do favourites Roman. Listen up” Logan interjects.

“Shut your boyfriend up” Roman whispers to him and he elbows Roman harder than he did to Remus.

The rest of the ride goes similarly and they make it to the other town in what seems like no time.


	3. Thrift Store Shopping Shenanigans.

“Alright gang” Thomas announces, clapping his hands together getting everyone to look his way. They're standing in front of the thrift store, Thomas is at the front of the four of them holding their attention “I'm going to be back here in about an hour to get you, so be ready for around-” he looks at his phone “-three, three thirty at the latest, I'll text Patton when I'm here.”

Logan however, already knew this. He had his watch set for three seventeen since this morning.

“Everybody get that?” Thomas asks making them all chorus a 'yes' in varying tones. He seems satisfied with that, so he gets back into his car and drives off leaving the four of them to themselves.

Remus is the first to move.

“Well let's get the fuck in there!” He declares, pushing his way through the door.

They file in after Remus, Patton grabs a cart for them to share.

“So what are we doing first?” Patton asks the group.

“Well, we should probably get what we are here for and if we have enough time, look around at anything else we might want to purchase” Logan suggests.

“To the clothes then!” Roman says leading the way, an arm up pointing in the direction of the clothing section.

They stop right at the edge of the first row of clothing racks now looking around at another loss of where to start, so Logan asks: “what specifically are you looking for and how much do you have in spending money?”

“I need a whole new wardrobe and I have like fifty bucks” Remus replies.

Okay, this is going to be slightly more challenging, he was certain Remus had more money than that.

“I've got you covered for anything you're missing Bro” Roman interjects.

Ah, that makes more sense now, he knew he wasn't wrong.

“Should we split up and pick out anything we think you'd enjoy or would you prefer us all to stay together?” Logan turns to ask Remus.

“Oh! The first one sounds like fun! _Wow_ me plebs!” Remus exclaims.

“It'll be like a fashion show!” Roman says excitedly.

“Oooh fun” Patton claps.

Well, it seems like that is what they're going with. He's not surprised.

It had the higher probability level of the two after all.

They separate, Logan goes straight for the button up shirts, knowing Patton will go towards the sweaters and Roman to the shoes first.

And Remus... Well Remus is harder to pinpoint, his probability doesn't exactly work well with Remus' random and sporadic thought process.

It is nice sometimes though, to have someone he can't predict the next actions of. It's one of the reasons he enjoys Remus' companionship.

Remus dose surprise him by following him instead of going off on his own.

“I thought we were splitting up?” He asks the other, Remus flails his arms up in a loose shrugging motion.

“You'll probably find the best stuff” he says factually, “ya know, on the account of your psychicness an junk” he waggles his fingers in Logan's face.

“I'm not psychic Remus” he informs while adjusting his glasses. “I just know the probabilities of certain outcomes and the percentages of each possibility before it happens so I can properly assess the situations at hand from the probable outcomes it provides me.”

“_Ass_ess this” Remus says shoving him lightly, “nerd” he tacks on affectionately.

Logan smiles as he stumbles, fixing his glasses as he rights himself.

“Shall we get started?”

“You tell me Mr. 'I know things before they happen'.”

Logan sighs. “That's not exactly how it works, there's more to it than just _knowing_.”

“Whatever! Start looking for clothes Nerdy Wolverine.”

So that's what they do, Logan picks up items and instead of using his probability to calculate the items he simply turns to Remus for confirmation; it's relaxing.

Some items that he shows he knows for a fact that Remus would never wear and he doesn't need his probability to tell him that, he does it on purpose to see Remus laugh out at the suggestions that are _obviously_ not his style.

It's fun. Logan is having fun.

They have a handful of potential shirts as they finish that row; they make their way to the next aisle, when a rack metaphorically catches his eye.

He walks up to the stand of different ties, Remus follows.

“Only serious people wear neck ties Lo.”

“Yes, you are quite right. I might get one for myself.”

“Blue” Remus says making Logan blink in confusion. Blue?

“Pardon?” He asks, looking at Remus looking at the ties.

“Blue” he repeats as he points at a specific tie. “It's your colour” he explains.

“Blue is my colour? How so?”

“_Suits_ you” he simply says. “That darker one up there” he waves his pointing hand to get Logan to look at it then jumps for it and trips in the process; taking the whole stand down with him.

“Are you alright?” Logan slowly asks.

There are ties everywhere, and there's also a large cut on the side of Remus' cheek, but he has a wide triumphant smile plastered on his face so Logan supposes his friend is alright. Remus holds up the tie that he's clutching, it's the one that he jumped for.

“I got it bitches!” He yells as a worker rushes towards the commotion frantically.

“We are quite sorry for the disturbance; we’ll get out of your way.” Logan hauls Remus away from the puddle of ties and the disgruntled worker who mutters 'fuckin children' under their breath.

Well then.

“Here!” Remus happily declares, thrusting the tie at Logan.

He takes the tie. Yes he does think blue will suit him just fine.

“You're bleeding” he states, “we should wash that out in the bathroom.”

Remus flaps his hand in a dismissive manner.

“Nah I got it” he says, wiping the blood on to his sleeve.

Or rather, Roman's sleeve.

“Roman is not going to be happy about that” Logan muses.

“Did your probability thingy tell you that?” Remus mocks.

“No, common sense did” Logan snarks.

~0~

Patton goes to the sweaters to begin with, cause who doesn't like a warm snugly sweater?

No one that's flippin who.

He knows kinda what he's looking for, he knows that Remus' favourite colour is green and that his sense of style is unique.

Though, he does wear a lot of Roman's more baggy and comfortable clothes, so he'll go for those.

He picks out several sweaters, most of them having green accents and funky designs on them, before moving on to the next aisle.

He looks up from his search to see Roman five rows down with his own basket filled with an abundance of items he’s heading towards the jackets at the other end with a shine in his eye.

He looks over to where Logan and Remus are to the far left of the jackets that Roman is perusing.

They both have an arm full of items, engaged in what looks like a playful conversation. Remus laughs, Logan smirks.

Well, they're having fun.

He continues the clothes hunt, picking up random things that he wants for himself as well, like this really cute long grey knitted sweater with little blue stars all over it.

He startles, jumping a bit when he hears a loud _crash_ around the area he last saw Remus and Logan.

He hopes they're alright, he goes to investigate the commotion.

He sees Remus wipe blood onto the hoodie sleeve he's wearing and he panics at the sight of the blood.

“Oh my gosh! What happened are you okay?” He rushes over, trying to push out a soothing aura as best as he can at the moment.

“Peachy keen Papa!” Remus smiles.

“You should clean your face” he worriedly suggests.

“That's what I said.” “That's what _he_ said!” they chorus at same time.

“Who said what?” Roman asks as he saunters towards them and continues without waiting for an answer like he didn't even ask the question to begin with. “I heard a ruckus and assumed it was my brothers doing, do I need to apologize to anyone?”

“Noo_o_” Remus says indignantly.

“I already did” Logan supplies, then looks at his watch. “We have a little over half an hour before Thomas arrives, we should decide what we're getting.”

Everyone nods as they dump all of the items they've accumulated into the cart Patton has been pushing around, Roman even drops his basket in.

“To the changing rooms!” Roman declares leading the way.

~0~

Roman goes right for the shoe racks to begin with, he knows Remus needs another pair and he has a vague outline of a specific outfit in mind if he can find the right items, and a pair of boots got his attention from across the room, so shoes first.

Remus was right yesterday, even if they had a bunch of money to spend they would still be going to the thrift store, Roman thrives here with all the treasures you can uncover and all the differing styles.

He goes from aisle to aisle and back again to aisles he's already been in to grab things he didn't think would work at first to pick them back up, in the end he figures the more Remus tries on the more he can find what he wants.

He needs a basket.

Dumping everything into an abandoned hand basket he looks up towards the back racks of jackets and a shine catches his eye that he just zeros in on it, marching up to it intent on getting it.

Taking it off the rack his eyes rove over it. Oh yes, this is definitely Remus' aesthetic.

He hears a loud crashing and rolls his eyes. That would probably be Remus; he should go check on that.

~

“Okay, so I got you things I know you'll like and also things I think you should wear” Roman says as they get to the changing area.

He pushes his brother into a stall “you go in there and we'll hand you things!”

They hand Remus outfits, if it fits he shows them, some items are not... great, Roman will admit, liking something on the rack and seeing them worn are two different things entirely.

Some of the clothing Remus comes out with are really nice, and he makes jiggy movements when he likes a specific piece.

This happens for a while longer until Roman hands him The Outfit. Saving it for last, of course!

“What the fuck?” Roman hears his brother whisper with amusement “Ro, what the fuck is this?”

“I don't know.” He so knows.

“This is definitely your doing isn't it?”

“Maybe, we won’t know until you come out.”

Patton looks worried, Logan looks curious.

“Roman?” Patton starts in a low tone.

“Don't worry Padre, it's nothing he'll be uncomfortable in, trust me.”

Patton looks slightly unsure but nods.

Roman feels a wave of calm wash over them anyway. Patton's way of saying 'it’s okay' directed in Remus' direction.

“Fiiine” Remus says pushing the door open and stepping out.

Who knew they made clothes like this for young teens?

Remus has his arms stretched out from his sides as he does a spin like he has done for all the other outfits.

The outfit, Roman must congratulate himself is simply amazing.

The jacket Remus is wearing is form fitting but not tight, the collar fans out and the ruffles lining the shoulder and cuffs aren't ugly like most ruffles tend to be and the jacket is also imbued with shiny green sparkles everywhere.

The shirt is slightly baggy with intentional rips throughout in a deep green colour; the collar is dipped, but not too low.

The pants are worn leather, but not clingy or tight, just the right amount of slack; covering up to his knees are a pair of punk boots.

Roman makes a note to buy neon green laces for them.

“Woooow” Patton breathes out.

Logan adjusts his glasses with a throat clearing. “Yes, 'wow' indeed Patton.”

Roman thinks Logan might be a tad flustered. Though, he would probably never admit that. You know cause: 'Roman, I do not have those types of feelings, stop asking'.

Whatever Nerd.

He can see a blush from Remus at Logan's agreement. Well, not much can do that, good for you Calculator Watch.

Roman whistles appreciatively.

“I love it” Remus says.

“Of course you do, I chose it” Roman boasts, hand fanned out towards his chest. “If I knew how good we look in leather I would have already gotten some for myself” he tacks on.

~0~

Remus decides he likes this style, he was already kinda leaning towards it, but this solidifies it for him.

The jacket is sparkly and the pants are weirdly comfortable.

He also looks pretty bad ass and judging from the others reactions, they agree.

He's definitely going to incorporate this more into the rest of his clothes buying decisions. 

That was also the last outfit they had for him to try on. Of course leave it to Roman to save it for last, the fuckin drama king.

He changes back into the clothes he came in. Roman hasn't noticed the bloody sleeve yet.

He picks up the 'yes' pile of clothes and they all head to the cash.

He ends up with three sweaters, two jackets, seven pants, eight shirts, four button up shirts a pair of converse and the boots.

Rather good haul today.

They're in line to pay as Logan's watch goes off at the same time Patton's phone dings.

Not psychic his ass.

“Thomas is here” Patton announces. “I'll just tell him we're almost done.” He says as he texts.

The total comes out to be much more than the fifty three that Remus has. Roman stays true to his promise to spot Remus the remaining amount.

Roman is too good for him honestly.

All of them are, he doesn't deserve them.

Patton snaps his head towards Remus with a concerned look.

Right, no self-deprecation around the living emotion detector.

Gathering all their bags they file out of the store, walking to Thomas' car; the trunk is already open for them to dump their newly acquired shit in.

As they climb into the car- sitting in the same seats as they did coming down- Thomas asks: “Have fun?”

“So much fun!” Patton pipes up “Remus gave us a little fashion show and he got so many cool clothes! And I even got some new stuff too!”

“That does sound fun” Thomas agrees “hey you guys hungry? I bought some snacks” he says handing Patton a lemonade and a large oatmeal chocolate chip cookie.

Thrusting a convenience store bag into the back for the rest of them, Remus takes it being the one sitting in the middle seat.

It's clear that Thomas knows what they like.

It makes sense the man practically raised them alongside their parents after all.

Roman gets a small bag of sweet and salty popcorn with an iced tea.

He hands Logan the water bottle and yoghurt/fruit/granola mix cup thing.

And he gets Mountain Dew Red and one of those individually packaged large pickles.

No doubt on who's was who's that's for sure.

Thomas starts the car after they buckle up and drives in the general direction of home.

That's the only way you can go when you wanna get into The Cove, just go in its general direction, vaguely knowing where to go. You'll eventually get there if it accepts you.

~

The drive was quiet while they ate for the most part. Remus did make some innuendos with his pickle, making loud gross noises until Thomas told him to stop.

“Remus, buddy. Please, enough with the noises okay?” He asks, but in that way adults ask which really means 'shut up'.

He did notice that it was annoying Roman on how his twin was crunching on his popcorn, and making Patton uncomfortable if the forced calm aura was anything to go by.

Logan is the only one who seems like he's not fazed by it.

Fine. He'll stop.

The rest of the drive was filled with light chatter and laughter, mainly from the brothers up front.

Roman and Logan do interject every now and then to get into the conversation.

Patton tells them about his new friend that he was helping yesterday, but Remus isn't listening...

He stays uncharacteristically quiet. Roman shoots him looks every once in a while.

What's wrong with him?

Whatever, his thoughts are enough for him to concentrate on right now, too loud to distinguish between what's being said and what he's thinking, so he stays quiet.

He doesn't know where this mood came from, but does he ever?

The answer is no. His brain does whatever the fuck it wants.

They just had a fun day! Stop being stupid!

He can feel Patton trying to calm him, but he pushes against it as best as he can, he doesn't want that right now.

Patton's wince at the push back obviously hurt his feelings but so what, he shouldn't be forcing that shit on people anyway!

Uuuuugh, why is he like this. He knows Patton is just trying to help!

Well, fuck him then huh?

Jeeze Remus, shut up.

He needs a distraction. That would be nice right now. He looks to Logan, who is conversing with Thomas and Patton.

Well, that idea is fucked into the ground.

So what, he'll just... deal with his thoughts.

Nothing new.

~

They get to The Cove within forty five ish minutes, the sun already going down as it does earlier once you're in The Coves boarders.

It felt like much, much longer than that though.

They get dropped off first considering Logan lives close by to Thomas and Patton, while they live on the other side of town.

Remus slams his bedroom door shut once he gets there, dropping his things on his bed and throwing himself limply to his floor, staring at the glow in the dark stars Logan gifted him.

'It might help calm you down' he said. Well, tough fucking luck for Remus.

UGH, he needs a distraction.

Roman knocks on his door but walks in without an answer and flicks on the light Remus ignored to do when he came in.

“Are you okay?” He asks softly.

“It's just a small cut Ro” he snips.

Roman looks at him like it's the first time he's seeing the cut.

“Well, I didn't realize that that was new”

Well, maybe he didn't notice.

“Dunce.”

“Asshole.”

They're both quiet until Roman comes to kneel at Remus' side, softly touching around the cut.

“This is not a small cut Rem, it's kinda deep actually.”

“It's fine, you can leave now.”

“Are you okay?” He asks again, Remus huffs.

“I already told you it's fine.”

“That's not what I meant.”

He knows, but Roman doesn't need his crap brothers crap ass thoughts dragging him down too.

Roman sighs while he gets up and leaves.

That's for the best.

But he comes back with rubbing alcohol, bandages and a warm cloth.

Idiot.

He closes his eyes, he can't look at Roman being so soft right now.

Remus doesn't flinch when Roman dabs his gash with the alcohol soaked cloth.

“You don't have to tell me anything” he whispers.

Duh, he knows this.

“But, I would like to help in any way I can. So I'm not leaving you tonight.”

Oh.

“We've dealt with everything else together, and we can deal with these intrusive thoughts as well. I'm The Prince Rem, I'm not going anywhere while you're hurting.”

Fuuuuck Ro stop being so _you_! You chivalrous wang!

Remus opens his eyes.

“They hate me” he whispers.

Roman looks taken aback.

“What? No they don't, what makes you think that, we just had a great day together.”

Remus shrugs. “They're being nice cause they like you.”

“So they've been being nice for our whole lives? Remus we grew up together, they like us equally.”

“They like _you_. I'm just the tag along reject twin who needs to be told to _shut up_.”

Roman finishes bandaging his cheek.

“You have to know that's not true” he says softly.

Remus grunts.

“Is, is this about Thomas telling you to stop? Cause you know he wasn't being malicious right.”

“No” Remus says, Roman raises an eyebrow.

“Yes? Ugh! Kind of? I don't know Ro it's a lot of things!” He throws his arms and legs up into the air, letting them thud back to the floor making his body into a star.

“Thomas was annoyed, _Patton_ was annoyed, fuck _you were annoyed_!”

“I wasn't annoyed” Roman says.

“Bullshit, Mr. Passive Aggressive Popcorn Muncher!”

“What? I was eating my popcorn in a normal fashion thank you very much.” he says poking Remus' bandage. 

“Whatever.”

Roman sighs again.

“Okay, granted, not everyone enjoys your... sense of humour” he says slowly.

Remus scoffs.

“But, _but_” he points at Remus “that's okay.”

Remus rolls his eyes.

“Hey, it's true! Do you like your jokes?” He waves his hand as he asks.

Remus nods.

“Okay so there, we may not all appreciate the crudeness, but that doesn't mean they hate you” he enunciates with poking Remus in the forehead multiple times as he speaks.

“Take your own advice Ro.”

Roman squints down at Remus with a scowl pout and huffs.

“Yea” he simply says, flopping himself down on the floor laying next to Remus.

They look at each other with small smiles.

Until Roman notices his sleeve, picking it up with Remus' limp arm.

“_Uhgh_” he whines, “you can keep this one.” he says, dropping the offending sight.

Remus snorts. 


	4. Settling In.

It's the day after the move and Virgil is already sick of all the boxes in his way and he misses his stuff, these walls are too bare and monotone; he wants his fairy lights and posters.

He needs to fix this, _now_.

Today is room arranging day he decides.

He stands in the middle of his room and looks around trying to figure out where to put what, he figures placing the large furniture is probably the first thing he should do before anything else.

He starts with the bed, moving it to the far left corner, diagonal from the door; moving the small side table next to it and putting his large, black fluffy carpet underneath that, the carpet takes up a lot of floor space but that's fine cause the floor is cold anyway.

Placing the bookshelf across from his bed in the far right corner and putting his desk next to that, close to the door. Yeah that looks good, so he now only has to place his dresser, T.V and bean bag chair.

The dresser fits perfectly on the wall that the door is on in the left corner but his T.V can't fit anywhere in here, his stereo goes on top of his dresser and takes up all the room. He moves it and the bean bag outside of his room for now.

He puts three CDs into the multi-stereo for them to shuffle between them while he works, cranking it up.

Now, for the fun part. Decorating.

He has three different fairy lights, the skull ones go directly above his beds headboard, the ghosts go on the other wall his bed is situated against and the bats go above his desk. Nice. He should get pumpkin ones next.

His posters are plentiful in number, he has enough to probably fill all the walls in this room if he spaced them out in an organized manner, but that's not his style. Instead of doing that he places them artfully around his room in collage like clusters and now there's still room to get more if he wanted to.

He starts to organize his books and collection of movies/shows on to his shelves, adding figures, knickknacks and toys.

Placing all the small stuff around and storing things in boxes under his bed that doesn't need to be out in the open, he's finally done his room.

He looks around at his hard work. He's proud of what he's done with it, it’s definitely cozy and very _him_. The rafters look like they can have stuff hanging from them; maybe he'll do that if he gets something that would go good there.

Walking out he almost trips on the bean bag chair. Well he does trip, but the chair is soft so it doesn't matter, no one needs to know.

His face scrunches up as he thinks of what to do with these.

Why not just... leave them out here? Make himself a makeshift living room.

Placing the television on a crate, with his game consoles on the floor in front of it and the chair in front of those. That's good for now.

Well, that was a lot of hard work. Rewarding though, he smiles to himself.

His stomach rumbling takes him out of his gazing.

Oh, yea it's probably around lunch time.

He checks his alarm clock on his nightstand.

Wait, what? It's four pm! How could he have not noticed how late it got, how come one of his dads didn't call down or lunch? Did his music drown them out? No they would have come down in that case...

He goes upstairs -Hex jumps off of the dryer to follow at his heels- he needs to check what's going on with his dads, they're probably just working as hard as he has been and they also lost track of time is all.

That's definitely it he tells himself.

Opening the door separating the basement from the rest of the house he stops in place looking around. They _have_ been busy, there's not one box to be seen, all furniture and other items are in their rightful places and it's clean everywhere.

He peeks at the kitchen and it's the same there, same for the dining room that they're probably never going to actually use.

No dads to be seen. Hex chirrups up at him, he looks down at her mismatched eyes.

“I know, it's weird right?”

They must be working upstairs then. He hasn’t been up there at all yet, so that's where he heads. Hex ever his tiny shadow follows along.

When he reaches the top of the stairs, the first door he notices is to his left and it leads into a large bathroom, there's another door on the same wall a bit farther down that is only slightly open.

To his right there's a door that is fully open so he goes to that one, standing in the doorway he realizes it's a large master bedroom, his parent’s room.

It's the length of the whole floor and there's a bay window to his left from where he's standing in the doorway.

On the other side of that is their bed, which actually takes up quite a bit of space in the large room. He's not sure why they have such a big bed, every time he's seen them sleep they're always cuddled together or tangled around each other in the middle of it, seas of bed on either side of them.

It's a very plush bed though. Dad doesn't seem like he sleeps often but with everything sleep related he's very nit-picky about.

He leaves this room, cause there's no Dads here either.

So that leaves the slightly open door on the other side of the hall.

He creeps up to it, to see if there's any sound coming from beyond the door.

He only hears typing so he knocks.

Pops’ voice answers it “come on in!”

Virgil steps into the room that is clearly Pops' office, everything is set up and in order on this floor too. No wonder they haven't seen each other all day.

“Hey Virge, what's up?” Pops asks, stopping his typing to look at Virgil.

“Um, where's Dad?” Is his first question.

“Oh!” -Pops jostles himself upwards a bit- “He went to figure out the funeral plans and deal with will stuff, he wanted to go alone to make it a quick experience” he explains.

“Okay, what's for supper?” His second question.

Pops shakes his head a little and looks towards his computer monitor.

“Oh gosh! I didn't notice it was this late, I'm so sorry about that buddy you must be hungry.”

Virgil shrugs, he could have made himself something if it was just lunch after all. “It's alright, I didn't notice the time either until I finished setting up my room, I couldn't fit the T.V and bean bag though so I made myself a little living room area.”

Pops smiles wide “that's such a good idea Virge! We should get a couch, oh and more bean bag chairs in case you bring home friends.” His voice was cheery throughout the sentence but that didn't stop Virgil from frowning.

“I don't have any friends Pops” he says, stuffing his hands into his hoodie pockets and looking away. Hex slinks around his ankles and props herself on her hind legs, her two front ones resting on his shins.

He picks her up, cuddling her to his chest in the same way Patton did yesterday, she immediately starts to purr.

Pops’ face falls slightly before brightening up again.

“What about that Patton kid who helped you move in yesterday?” He asks like he knew what Virgil was thinking.

Virgil wrinkles his nose. “I don't think that counts as being friends?” he says with a questioning tone.

Emile laughs softly, “well don't tell _him_ that.”

Virgil squints “you really think we're friends?”

“Absotutely I do!” his smile is genuine, Virgil softens a bit.

He gets up off his puffy office chair, slapping his hands to his thighs as he does so.

“How about some dinner huh?” He asks, fluffing Virgil's hair as he walks past him out of the office.

Virgil follows him down the stairs, he drops Hex as she wriggles in his grasp and then she darts to his chair in the living room to sleep. Fine, he sees how it is.

They walk into the kitchen and Emile claps his hands once and addresses Virgil.

“What would you like for dinner tonight? Your dad should be back soon-” he checks the time on the stove clock “-we should start making it so it's ready for when he's back, wanna be my Little Chef?”

“You're lucky Dad isn't here for that Ratatouille reference” Virgil smirks.

“It had nothing to do with him, he'd be fine” Pops says, sticking out his tongue, cause ya'know he's an adult.

“Well if you didn't go overboard with quoting it at him when it came out, he'd be even better.” Virgil now with a shit eating grin in place, sticks his own tongue out.

“You sassafrassin' me mister?”

“Of course not Father Dearest.” He slaps on a fake smile that reads 'I'm being good, honest'.

Emile nods his head once in a quick motion that says 'that's that then' and smiles at Virgil goofily, turning around to face the fridge he opens it with a flourish simply exclaiming: “food!” He drops his arms limply, staring into the fridge. “Huh, well okay then” he says lowly.

Turning to Virgil and closing the door he claps his hands, keeping them together and raised to his mouth.

“Here's the thing-” he starts, pointing his clasped hands towards Virgil “-there's no food,”

“What?” Virgil deadpans, Pops smiles sheepishly.

“Well we did everything and forgot to grocery shop, I forgot we we're supposed to do that today but we couldn't cause Remy got called in for will stuff from the lawyer guy” his hands gesture left and right while talking as if to state his points.

“You don't have to explain yourself to me Pops.”

“I know. Now what do ya wanna order?” Emile asks with a wide smile, cell phone already in hand.

“Do you need to ask?” Virgil replies, Pops looks at him over the rim of his glasses like Dad would.

“You _could_ want Chinese.”

Oh, that actually does sound good. His face must have shown his thoughts cause Pops giggles and admits: “Actually, _I_ want Chinese.”

Virgil looks at him unimpressed.

“Hey! There's this really amazing place here that I haven't had for ages and I still know the number, your Dad and I used to get take out from there basically every Friday when we lived here, we were just out of collage living with Clem at the time” he has a soft smile on his lips, “ah memories.”

He stops dialling the number like he just realised something.

“What if it's not there anymore” he whispers, eyes wide.

Virgil shifts where he stands “you won't know until you try?” He says slowly.

“Right you are Virge” and he presses the call button.

Virgil can hear the rings, once, twice, thrice? Whatever, three times. Then the other line picks up, he can't hear the other person but Pops' smile is wide enough to tell him that they're gonna be having Chinese tonight.

Pops talks on the phone longer than necessary for a food order so Virgil sits on his chair with Hex, petting her lazily.

After about twenty minutes he hangs up.

“Wow, I wasn't expecting it to be the same people and for them to remember me! That's pretty Wild Thornberries” he says cheerily, Virgil snickers and rolls his eyes at the unnecessary cartoon reference.

Pops’ phone blips and his head instantly snaps down at it like it startled him, a smile breaks across his face.

“Remy's on his way back, good timing too” he muses.

He always has good timing Virgil thinks.

Pops takes plates and cups out of the cupboards, silverware out of the drawers and places them on the breakfast bar. He looks at them in contemplation for a moment. Virgil has an amused look on his face watching his father balance everything on the plates and then trying to balance those in his hands, the glasses wobble and Virgil figures he should help, so he gets up to grab the cups from their precarious positions, Pops pouts.

“I could've done it, I worked at a diner in collage you know” he states.

“I _do_ know, that's where you met Dad, I've heard _that_ story a lot. I just wanted to help you not break anything” he says placing them on the coffee table, Emile does the same with his handful.

Virgil practically throws himself on his large cushy chair, disturbing Hex's perched slumber.

Pops sits on the couch, turning the television on and switching to their recorded shows.

“Wanna watch the newest episode of Gravity Falls while we eat?” he says waggling the clicker.

“That's another 'not question' Pops” he replies.

“Not necessarily, you changed you mind about pizza, how do I know if you'd wanna watch something else” he says with a kind smirk and head waggles.

The front door opens, Dad comes in with a few plastic bags.

“I ordered Chinese!” Emile says brightly, moving his head around the couch to keeps his eyes on his husband while Remy walks into the kitchen to deposit the bags.

He slips his shades on to the top of his head “Oh my god I love you” he says sauntering over to the couch and dropping himself next to Emile, laying on him in exhaustion he lets out a long sigh. Emile runs his hand through Remy's hair, snagging the sun glasses removing them from Remy's person, setting them aside and continues scratching Remy's scalp.

“Aw hon, you have a rough day?” He asks softly.

As much as he loves his parents, these little tender moments that they unabashedly share makes Virgil feel like he's intruding in on something private, he shifts playing with his hoodie zipper.

“Nah not too bad like, considering” Dad answers waving a hand in the air. “Dice is coming down tomorrow for the funeral on Wednesday” he informs, Virgil jerks his head towards his dads.

“How long is he staying?” Virgil asks.

“Like, a week or so, don't worry you'll def get uncle bonding time.” He can't see his Dads face from this angle but he can hear the smile in his tone, he continues talking in a softer voice, “he wants to help clean out Moms apartment, said he's gonna stay over there for the week, I was thinking of staying with him.”

Emile, never stopping from petting his husband, has a soft, sweet smile playing on his lips he answers in the same tone Remy spoke in. “That's alright honey, do what you need to do. Virge and I will still be here when you get back, we can handle being by ourselves can't we Pumpkin King?” Pops turns his soft expression to Virgil.

“Yea, we can handle a couple of days without you...”

“Hey, you guys can totes come and help us pack stuff up if you wanted, we can all check out the cafe together.”

The doorbell rings.

Emile nudges Remy “you're gonna have to move hon”

Remy whines “Ugh, but do I really?”

“If you want food you do, silly” he boops Remy's nose.

Remy playfully rolls his eyes and whines dramatically this time “fiiiiine, you win Picani.”

“Always do” Emile says, placing a kiss to his forehead as he gets up.

As Pops pays for the food Virgil goes to the episode titled 'The Time Traveller’s Pig' to start it when ready.

Dad hands Virgil a plate, cup and utensils then gets up to retrieve two two litre sodas from the bags he brought home.

They eat and watch Gravity Falls, commenting here and there about certain parts of the episode.

They stay there, in the living room watching more shows that they've recorded for a couple of hours, styrofoam containers and dishes littered around. The living room is warm and comfortable, Hex purring curled up in his arms as he's curled up on his chair. Virgil feels like he might fall asleep.

He hears Dad chuckle, then soft carpeted footsteps coming towards his chair, he lazily opens his eyes looking up at his Dad standing just at the base of his chair smiling softly down at him. He closes his eyes again as Dad just bends down and with zero effort he picks Virgil up like a baby, Virgil's head resting in the crook of his neck.

“He must be super tired, it's not even close to how late he usually stays up” Pops whispers, “he was working in the basement all day today,” a hand brushes his bangs to the side.

“Well, we should totes go marvel at his hard work shouldn't we?”

Virgil feels movement then hears the basement door creak; he feels the motion of going down the stairs and hearing them groan in protest as they descend.

He hears Pops gasp “oh look at how cute this little corner is that he set up, we should get more comfort items down here for him.”

He feels Dad nod while hearing his bedroom door swish open, he doesn't turn on the main light, but from the soft glow and small click Virgil assumes one of his fairy lights was turned on.

“Nice, he like really worked his ass off with this room huh?” Dad whispers.

He feels a kiss on his forehead, then he's being lowered in his bed, the blankets cover him Dads hand is on his head and a whispered “sweet dreams Pumpkin.”

Virgil is out before they leave his room.

~ 

Virgil wakes up with Hex snuggled under the covers with him, his skull lights giving off a low glow around his bed, he looks to his side to read his alarm clock.

7:33 am. Okay, earlier than he usually wakes but it's fine. It's Monday and school starts in a week’s time so he should probably start getting used to the early hours again he reasons to himself.

So instead of doing what he wanted, which was to curl around his cat and go back to sleep, he wrenches the blankets off of himself, Hex opens her blue eye to look at him in a way that he thinks she'd be saying 'excuse you, _I'm_ still sleeping', so he covers her up again.

Walking to his dresser he gets out his clothes for the day and decides to take a shower, which he supposes is going to be in his personal bathroom basically, considering he practically claimed the basement as his.

Neat, he's never had his own bathroom before. Maybe he'll decorate it too.

After his shower he goes upstairs to see if there's at least cereal to eat.

“Mornin' Dad” he murmurs then double takes. That's not his dad.

Uncle Dice is sitting at their breakfast bar, laptop open in front of him, large travel mug full of black coffee in hand. He looks at Virgil, his large rounded sun glasses nestled in his hair which happens to be up in a messy bun.

What's with the Tempest brothers and sun glasses?

“How's my favourite nephew?” He asks.

“I'm your only nephew, not many choices to work with, you're stuck with it” Virgil mutters.

“Okay, none of that. It just means I don't have others to disappoint when I choose you, I know what I'm talkin' about. I'm a professional.” He says matter of factually. Waving his hand towards the other counter “I brought breakfast” he says as an afterthought.

Virgil smiles he goes straight to hug his uncle, Dice hugs back immediately. “Did you drive all night?” He asks muffled by Dice's shoulder.

“Mmn, something like that” he pats Virgil's head.

Virgil moves away, looking around the kitchen noticing the distinct lack of fathers.

“How'd you get in?” he asks quizzically, Dice puts a finger to his own lips in the universal sign for 'shh'.

“I have my ways” he says cryptically, Virgil can respect that.

~

Virgil is finishing his breakfast while Uncle Dice has been typing furiously at his keyboard, when Pops bounds down the steps still in his rumpled sleep clothes, he doesn't stop in confusion to ask when Uncle Dice got there or asks how he got in, so Virgil assumes that he's the one who let him in.

“Heya Die! Rem told me that you were here” he cheerily says.

Okay, so maybe not. Dad then.

“Oh yea? And he can't come down here to greet his older brother?” He begins.

Or not?

“His rating as a brother is lowering in ranks with every interaction, or well, lack thereof. That's why you're my favourite Emi” he finishes.

“Yea just keep talkin' out of your ass brother dearest. I like, actually have a life” Dad says coming down the stairs. “Also, don't like, flirt with my husband.”

“I'm not flirting, I'm stating a fact” his lips turn up in a lopsided playful smirk.

“Children, please” Emile says with his hands up in a placating way, “play nice or I'll have to separate you.”

Virgil snorts harshly, hand flying to his mouth.

“So, what ungodly hour did you drop in here?” Dad asks pouring his own large mug of coffee, also pouring some in Pops' cup as well before handing it to him.

“Four am, no biggie” he says with a shrug.

“Four am, gurl you've been sitting in my kitchen since four freakin' am?”

“I had work to keep me preoccupied, it wasn't that long of a wait don't feel too bad about it” Uncle Dice says in a playful mocking tone.

“Oh I don't, no worries there” he sips his coffee, “and you like, judge people for a living, I call that playing.”

The brothers stare at each other, neither of them willing to crack into the fit of laughter that Virgil _knows_ they want to erupt in, but this is a game and one of them is going to win.

“_You would_ think it's all play you demon. It's very serious work you know” Uncle Dice says his smile wide enough that it almost made him lose.

Dad is glaring a bit, Pops hops into the conversation once again.

“Alrighty! What shall we do today?”

“What shall we do?” Virgil mimics and Pops smiles wide.

Dice sighs “I was just waiting for Rem to get up so we can loot Moms apartment” he gets up and closes his laptop; he waits pointedly for Dad to hurry up. Which, he doesn't.

“Mmm” he 'thinks' on it “fine, I guess. We're taking your car though.”

He refills his mug before stepping up to Emile, planting a light kiss on him “you boys can come and check out the cafe in about an hour if you want to do that today” he says, pressing keys into Emile's hands.

Pops hums and steals another kiss before letting his husband go with his brother.

They leave and Virgil asks the question he had since this whole interaction started.

“How the heck did he get in?”

Pops laughs almost, nervously? “You know what, I have no clue.”

~

Virgil is playing on his (previously Dads) purple see-through Game Boy Colour, while Pops takes a shower and gets ready for the day.

He's sitting sideways in his chair his legs dangling off an arm, head resting on the other. Game Boy held up above his head, Hex is sleeping on his stomach; Pokémon music coming from the small speakers on the hand held.

“Hey Virge!” Pops yells from the top of the stairs “get ready bud we're leaving in ten okay?”

He doesn't bother answering, too focused on a battle at the moment. Pops won’t expect an answer anyway.

He finishes the battle before Pops comes down stairs so he sits there petting Hex in comfortable silence, minus her purring. Which honestly just made it more comfortable.

Barley two minutes later he comes downstairs, dressed in very casual clothing as opposed to his 'work clothes', a faded grey Voltron shirt under a loose pink cardigan that’s left open.

“Ready?” He asks, Virgil gets up and places Hex on the cushion, and off they go into town.

Town square is about a ten minute drive from home and they pass by the school on their way there. It’s awfully small and they put all the grades from Kindergarten to grade eleven in there, how?

They park right in front of the cafe, it’s one of several shops littered around this area, seems like this is the shopping part of town. There isn’t much though. He did take note of a cool looking antique shop that might be fun to look through.

Pops takes the keys Dad gave him earlier that morning out of his jeans pocket to unlock the cafe and they step in.

He doesn't know why he thought it would be old and dingy or even abandoned maybe. It was up and running just last week after all.

But it looks nice and clean, it has a homey vibe to it with nice worn couches and mismatched chairs with mismatched tables scattered around. The colour of the walls are a lilac with yellow accents, there are lanterns and fairy lights strung about the room and the crystals hanging in the large windows throw rainbows in all directions thanks to the sun.

It’s beautiful and Virgil could see himself spending a lot of time in here.

“Okay, I'm gonna go check out the kitchen to see if I still know my way around it” Pops informs, then adds: “the stairs at the far end wall go up in to the apartment, it's the second entrance so we're going to get rid of it before renting it out. My point is, it should be unlocked right now, go see if you can find your Dad and Uncle hm?”

He doesn't give a verbal response, he just walks to the stairway. Being on top of the staircase shows him a closed door with muffled voices coming from behind it.

He opens the door but pauses before he can get very far, his uncles voice stopping him cold in his tracks.

“You have to tell him soon Remy.” He sounds agitated.

“Mind your own business, I didn't hire your judgey ass to rate my decisions Die” Dad spits out.

“You know that's so not what I'm doing! I'm just trying to look out for you, for Virgil! Don't you want to warn him before anything happens?” Uncle Dice hisses. 

Virgil flinches. They're arguing about... him?

“Don't you dare use my son like that, you know very damn well I'd **_kill_** for that boy! He's just not ready yet and I don't think you have any say in this matter!” Dad says his words dripping venom.

Uncle Dice scoffs “okay, but what about The Cove? If _you_ don't tell him soon, something will it's just a matter of time.”

“I have enough time I'll tell him when it's time to tell him” he sounds like he's talking through gritted teeth.

“He's already twelve Rem, you remember when you were twelve? How hard that was on you without any guidance?”

Virgil doesn't know what to do. He's rooted to the spot. He's not sure if he wants to listen anymore. But it feels like he should know. But if Dad says he's not ready to know _whatever this is_, then... should he trust that? Should he walk away like he heard nothing? 

“He's not like me Die, he's-” Virgil makes noise to signal to them that someone is coming and walks through the door.

Dads head is snapped to his direction, shades folded in his shirt collar -which he only does when extremely angry, too many times knocking them off his head while flailing his hands make that their temporary home-

He looks spooked, and angry. Virgil's never seen him like this.

“Oh” he falters “I didn't notice anyone coming in the building” he says nervously, Virgil lifts his shoulders a tiny fraction in a pathetic shrug.

Dad looks worried for him “you okay Pumpkin?”

He does a half nod, half shake of his head. He can't form words right now, too much going on, too many thoughts screaming at him.

Dads expression melts into something soft and understanding, a warm smile now in place of the scared scowl he walked in on. He opens his arms and Virgil rushes into the hug.

“Just one of those quiet days hm?”

Virgil nods/shrugs noncommittally.

Uncle Dice, hasn't said anything or even looked his way since he came in. 


	5. Funerals and Forging Friendships.

Today is the funeral.

His grandmother’s funeral, his grandmother who he doesn't really know. He's not sure how to feel about it, he's sad that he didn't know her and he's sad that he won't be able to anymore.

He doesn't really know what's going to happen at the funeral, it was planned three days ago so he's not really expecting anyone but his family to be there, who would know about it in such short notice?

Maybe he should have invited Patton, they seemed close.

Great, now he feels like a jackass for not thinking of that sooner.

He's in his room with the lights off except the fairy lights, he’s slumped in his computer chair with his head resting on the back of it; staring into the ceiling rafters.

Hex is sleeping on top of the computer monitor; never too far away from Virgil.

He lolls his head to look at his alarm clock to check how much time he has before they have to leave, not too long it seems.

He hasn't changed from his sleep clothes all day, hasn't really felt like it.

But, he should probably get ready so he trudges his way to his dresser to find some suitable clothing. Dad said he didn't need to dress for a funeral, to just dress regularly cause it was supposed to be more of a celebration of life and not the mourning of death.

But he thinks that's kind of a moot point considering all his clothes are dark anyway.

He does have some colours, purples, reds, dark blues. But he chooses all black anyway it just seems like he should, he feels it matches his feelings right now with everything going on.

So a simple black t-shirt with a spider web pattern and a baggy hoodie should be fine with jeans. Dad did say it didn't matter he doesn't need to be fancy.

He makes his way upstairs (Hex shadows him) to not be bored in his room anymore, he'll just be bored in the living room instead. It makes logical sense, shush.

Flopping on to his chair, he waits in silence. Hex joins him on his chest and curls up; her purrs start immediately.

It's quiet here with Dad gone.

He wonders what Dad and Uncle Dice are doing and if they're still arguing over whatever they were the other day.

It's quiet...

“Hey there sleepy head” Pops softly shakes Virgil awake, he didn't even realize he fell asleep. “We need to head out soon, are ya ready?” He's crouched in front of Virgil's chair to be eye level with him and smiling softy.

Virgil slowly nods.

“Alrighty then, let’s get our shoes on them hm?” Pops has been talking to him with soft tones and in question form since Monday, which okay _sure_, Virgil hasn't uttered a word since then, but that isn't really anything new or different.

It's not uncommon for him to not be able to talk for multiple days. Though, then Virgil usually just signs at that point and Pops always tries to help him through whatever is bothering him. Virgil hasn't even signed anything to him, how could he? He can't just bring up what he heard, what Dad and Uncle Dice were talking about! And he defiantly can't just tell him that he doesn't know what’s bothering him, Pops always knows when he's lying. Not that he lies to his parents often.

So he just stays silent. Silent is safe, no room for messing up what you wanna say.

No wonder Pops is worried. Damn it Virgil, why do you have to be this way?

They head to the car. Virgil has his hands in his hoodie pockets with the hood up, he’s trailing behind his father as they walk down the walkway to the driveway.

They head to the only funeral home in town, which is at the other side of town and in twenty minutes they're there.

Virgil is floored looking over the expanse of the property.

The cemetery is huge. The wide field of tombstones end with forest baring it on all sides, like wherever you go in this town you'll eventually be stopped by a forest barrier.

The cemetery is overwhelming in and of itself, but the large Gothic house that is practically a mansion looms just in front of the cemetery gates.

The sign in the front of the pathway leading up to the house reads:

** _ Ainsworth Cemetery._ **

** _ Funeral Home._ **

** _ Crematorium._ **

** _ Mortuary._ **

** _ Open 24/7_ **

** _ Est. 1766_ **

He was so distracted by everything that he didn't notice how many cars were situated in the parking lot and all around the property.

And there are _a lot_ of cars, it looks like most of the town is attending.

They walk up the path and up the stairs to the porch.

Right beside the large double doors a poster board with a picture of his grandmother in her twenties-ish is propped up. Her wild mane of red curls frames her freckled face, she has a bright toothy smile in place and a very familiar pair of sun glasses perched on her forehead.

The poster board simply reads:

Clementine Tempest.

Loved by all.

1853 – 2012

1853? That, that must be some kind of typo right? It can't be right cause according to that she would have to have been about a hundred and fifty years old.

He turns to Emile confused, and is about to tap the board in question, but Pops just slips his hand into Virgil's.

“There's gonna be an overwhelming amount of people in there, you wanna stay by my side?” He asks gently.

Virgil's eyes go wide, an overwhelming amount? How do they all know it was today the funeral was just planned!

His hold on Pops tightens and they walk through the ornate doors, down some hallways towards the back of the mansion.

They step through another pair of ornate doors, and _holy wow_. It_ is_ like half the town is here, there are way too many people.

The room is large enough to hold all of them and then some, like a ball room. There are large ceiling length windows lining the back walls that look over into the cemetery and the almost set sun. Under the middle window the casket stands on a pedestal surrounded by an abundance of different colourful flowers.

The left side of the room is situated with tables a myriad of food items on the long ones and smaller tables scattered around for you to eat at. The right side of the room holds what looks like an open bar.

It was more of a party than a funeral, some people wore black but not in a mourning type way, more like that's what their style is anyway, there’s a lot of colour to be seen in the crowd.

People are chatting light heartedly and laughing, children are running around and dancing to the soft upbeat music playing and everyone seems to be having a great time despite the circumstances.

Pops still holding onto Virgil's hand, tugs him lightly “let’s go find your father yea?”

Virgil doesn't answer him, he just points to Dad who is already on his way over to them.

When he reaches them he slumps against Pops, his head resting on Emile's shoulder.

“Uugh, I am so glad that you guys are here my brother is driving me freakin insane, like stop please for two seconds.” He whines into Pops’ neck, Emile pets Remy's head. “I'm coming home tonight, I just can't deal with him anymore” he mumbles.

Pops hugs him he drags Virgil into it as well and they stay like that for about half a minute as the party continues around them, that's fine though.

Dad is the one who breaks the embrace with a tired sigh, he looks at Virgil “how you holdin' up Pumpkin?”

Virgil shrugs one shoulder, looking up at him behind his bangs.

Dad looks tired.

“I think I saw your friend Patton over by the bar, why don't you go chill with him?” Remy suggests.

Pops squeezes his hand encouragingly then loosens his grip, but still holding on to let Virgil make the decision.

He lets go and makes a not so convincing smile, heart thudding in his chest as he walks out of his fathers grasp and into the throng of people he heads towards the bar.

He hears loud light laughter the closer he gets and he sees Patton perched on a bar stool, hand on the shoulder of the kid next to him who seems exasperated at the antics of the kid that is next to _him_.

As he gets closer he can hear their conversation.

“Do you think I can steal some booze when the bartender isn't looking?”

“Remus no!”

“Remus yes!”

“Please don't” Patton says.

The boy on the far side puts his hand on Remus'? Shoulder, he sighs dramatically.

“You guys are no f_uuu_n” He whines.

Patton shakes his head but there's a smile on his face. That’s when he notices Virgil heading there and his face brightens even more, waving at him gesturing him over like that's not exactly what he was doing.

“Virgil! I was wondering when you'd get here! Guys this is who I was talking about the other day!” He gestures to Virgil.

They all swivel around in their stools to look at him.

No pressure or anything, everyone is just staring at him. He two finger salutes the group, not being able to talk at the moment, not that in this particular situation he'd be able to anyway. He's not going to be able to handle this, they're all gonna hate him, he can't speak for gods sake!

A small sense of calm suddenly pokes at him.

Patton gestures to his friends. “Guys this is Virgil!”

“Yea, no duh” the one next to Patton murmurs, Patton looks at him with a cute scowl/pout but otherwise ignores him.

He gestures next to him, the boy in a white shirt with red accents and a little crown on the breast pocket. “This is Roman! And next to him is his twin brother Remus!” He announces.

Remus is wearing a dark green shirt that hangs low on one shoulder, the shirt reads 'good mourning' and there's a picture of a skeleton waking up in a coffin. How appropriate. Remus waves madly his smile wide.

“And on the end there is Logan!” Patton says.

Logan, in a simple black polo and a shiny dark blue tie nods his head in Virgil's direction.

“Come sit with us!” Patton says excitedly patting the stool next to himself.

Virgil hopes the smile he wears is welcoming and nice but he has a feeling it's more strained than anything.

He climbs on to the stool and the others swirl theirs back towards the bar.

Roman leans forwards on the bar to look at Virgil “so, what's your deal?”

His deal? What does he mean by that?

Virgil narrows his eyes, a scowl in place and tries to answer but no sound comes out only a scoff, well this is going to be a disaster isn't it? And he actually liked being around Patton too.

“Patton gave us the impression that you could speak, was that false or are you just really shy?” Roman says.

“He's just nervous around new people! I had to _push a little emotion_ into our first conversation before he was comfortable” Patton says brightly but pointedly.

Roman doesn't look impressed, Virgil gets the feeling he doesn't like him too much...

“Why would you say it like that Pat? If he's living here he's going to know sooner rather than later.”

Know what?

Patton swerves his head towards Roman “well maybe I'm not ready to tell him yet” he says a little uneasily, a little scared.

More people not telling him things.

“Okay! Enough of your petty bullshit Ro!” Remus says smacking the bar top.

Roman lets out an offended noise, hand at his chest. “Ugh, petty bullshit? excuse you!”

Remus ignores his brother “Virgil, why the fuck are you here?”

“Remus!” Patton scolds.

Logan clears his throat “I am sorry about that Virgil, we do not meet many new people, if at all any. It’s a very small town and we don't usually leave for long periods of time.”

“Kay, sure yea but it was a serious question! He just moved here, how does he know the dead person?” Remus defends.

“She was my grandmother” he whispers. Finally, words.

“And he speaks” Roman says waving a hand.

Patton sends Virgil a soft smile, Logan looks down at the bar uncomfortably, Remus is staring at him. 

“I am... Sorry” Roman says quietly.

“Eeeyea, me too I didn't know” Remus says.

Virgil shrugs, whatever it's not like he expected them to know.

Patton is the one to lift the mood.

“Whadda want to drink Virge?”

Drink? At the bar? What. They're twelve.

He cocks his head to the side to see what everyone else is drinking.

Patton has a root beer float, alright then. Roman’s drink looks like a sunset, he has no idea what that could be. Remus has a dark red, syrupy looking drink and Logan has a tea cup.

Okay so, they're presumably not drinking alcohol, good he wouldn't know what to do if they were. What even is the drinking age around here? Probably not anywhere near twelve that's for sure.

“Uh, I don't know... It's okay I'm good” he murmurs.

The bartender sets a glass in front of him, it looks like an iced latte of some sort whipped cream and raspberries topping it.

What? Looking at it he realizes that, yea this is actually what he really wanted, how did she know that before he did?

Patton smiles up at her “thanks Kate!”

She salutes him and moves on to the other end of the bar.

No one questions this behaviour, no one even seems confused by it. 

Virgil sips at his drink, pumpkin spiced. Nice. The raspberries are a nice touch too, he loves raspberries.

The four other boys continue to talk amongst themselves, Virgil is content to just listen in on the conversation at hand.

He can get used to this whole, group thing, he’s used to having only one friend so being in a group is going to be a weird difference

A bell chimes all around the large room and everyone turns towards the casket where the sound originated.

A man and a woman in very nice clothing are standing there in front of the casket, the woman speaks.

“Good evening, I would like to inform everyone that all the guests who is coming has arrived, we will start the ceremony shortly so please when the seats raise be seated.”

She claps her hands and everyone moves to the sides as the floor slowly splits down the middle and a platform of pews rise.

No one seems surprised, they all moved like it was the norm for a room to transform itself with the clap of the hands.

What is up with this town?

As the pews platform clicks into place people start taking their seats.

The man at the front stands next to the bench right at the front and announces.

“Would the family of the deceased sit in the front please.”

And although he said 'please' Virgil doesn't think he meant it as a question or request.

He fidgets in his seat, being in the front? That's too much. He'd much rather spectate in the back than everyone watch him even walk to the front, nonetheless be seated in front of all of them. He wishes he knew where his fathers were, it'd be easier to walk down that aisle with someone.

Patton lays a hand on his shoulder comfortingly, more comforting than it really should have been, but it does relax him enough for him to get up.

He takes a deep breath, eyes closed and releases it, okay he’s ready.

As much as he says that he'd be fine to himself, he's still kind of nervous but he does it anyway. He walks down the aisles of people, trying to ignore them, and when he gets to the front there sits his two favourite people in the world and his anxieties lessen.

He sits in between them, they both put their arms around him on the back of the bench and scooting their bodies closer together in a comforting shelter.

The ceremony like everything else lately is weird and confusing.

There’s a lot of burning strong smelling things and sing chanting in another language.

His family is sprayed with some type of light purple mist that smells good and then when it’s all over people are allowed to go up to the front to speak.

There are many people who spoke of the cafe fondly and how his grandmother always made them feel welcomed and secure.

There are people who, to Virgil were spouting absolute nonsense, stuff he didn't understand and couldn't decipher the meanings of.

Some things were hard to keep track of, but he listened anyway.

Patton went up, teary eyed and said how much he was going to miss her, they were pretty close, Clem taught him a lot of things but he couldn't seem to continue everything he wanted to say cause he just began crying through his words, Roman escorted him away from the podium, arms around his shoulders.

Both his fathers went up at the same time, regaling the great times that they shared and reminiscing about their lives with her, how supportive she was. Pops cried when he was talking about how much she changed his life and how he'll never be able to repay her.

She was, is and forever will be loved it seems.

Surprisingly, Uncle Dice didn't go up, he just sat there uncharacteristically quiet.

After the ceremony the sky was black and the stars were shining brightly with the full moon hanging proudly in the sky.

The view from the windows on looking the cemetery was breathtaking.

People started to leave the hall and he noticed when most of them were gone, Patton and his group stayed. They were the only other people there, besides some other kid who looked like they were cleaning up.

The group started to walk towards him so he met them in the middle, Patton put his arms around him and squeezed.

Remy sauntered up to them.

“Damn, okay so who here wants some freakin milkshakes?” He says.

“That'd be great” Patton chirps.

“Fuuuck yess” Remus hollers.

“Wonderful!” Roman lilts out.

“That would be satisfactory” Logan replies.

Well, they're quite the group huh, he guesses he's part of that now?

Remy smiles at the young teens, turning to address Virgil he says “She left you something, though you can't use it till you're like sixteen so, like we'll just use it till you can, and right now with this entourage it's gonna be useful, come it's outside.”

They all follow him outside to the parking lot and they stop in front of a hippy looking van, kinda like the Mystery Machine, but painted in different shades of purples and blues with the odd reds and yellows swirling through.

Pops is sitting in the passenger seat already, looking nostalgic.

Dad opens the side door for the boys to get in, there are no back seats just a bunch of comfortable looking pillows with cushy flooring and fairy lights strung up.

They all climb in and settle themselves before Dad starts the van.

Virgil sits in the middle of the two front seats facing his, friends?

“Hey Dad, why'd she give me this van?” he whispers.

“Well, she gave your uncle and I the cafe, that he thank Goood signed over to me. But this van was also a big part of her life, she lived in this van for quite a while, she probably just wanted to give you a piece of herself.”

He doesn't know how to feel about that, it's great, it's unexpected and he wishes not for the first time that he actually knew his grandmother.

Virgil sits there on the floor of his van (weird) his head is leaning on Pops’ chair, he scratches at Virgil’s scalp soothingly, his eyes close as he listens to the soft chatter the others.

His friends.

~0~

Patton hasn't been in the cafe since Clem died, even before Remy closed it and they were still open and running despite its owner dying.

He just didn't feel right going in anymore without her there, it hurt too much.

And now here he is standing in front of it with his friends like it was a normal Friday night for them.

All the lights inside were obviously off, it being closed and all, but the lights in the apartment upstairs were on shining lightly and slightly cutting the darkness.

He hasn’t seen those lights on since, well it’s occupant died.

Remy unlocks the doors and keeps it open for them and gestures for them to go in.

Virgil fidgets but goes in first, leading the rest of them in.

The swirl of emotions he feels from everyone as they all stand in the darkened cafe almost makes him cry again. He pushes against the sad feelings but doesn't push it out into the air, he doesn’t think now is a good time to shift the rooms emotion.

Doesn't mean he can't do it to himself.

Their usual spot is at the largest bay window with a round table nestled up to the windows seat and two comfortable chairs sitting on the other side of it.

They take their seats like they always do, Roman on one side of the window with Patton next to him, his legs are usually stretched out on the window seat with him leaning his back against the wall but not this time as Virgil sits next to Patton. Logan and Remus each takes one of the chairs.

Remy walks up to them, Emile right behind him and they stop in front of their table, Emile snakes his arms around his husband and lays his chin on Remy’s shoulder, eyes closing.

“So, like what do you guys want?” He addresses them.

“Is the menu still the same?” Logan asks.

Remy taps his chin thinking “hmm, well for the sake of this being easy, yea sure. But like I don't care, ask for anything and I'll conjure it up for you.”

Remus gasps loudly, Remy raises an eyebrow.

“Oh god, don't_ tell_ _him that_!” Roman protests.

Patton giggles.

“Why not?” Virgil asks slowly his eyes narrowed in confusion.

“Well, Remus has a very unique set of taste buds” Patton explains.

“That's a nice way of saying the stuff he likes is disgusting” Roman says.

“Pshh, bitch please” is all Remus responds with.

“Do you wanna know what some of his favourite snacks are?” Roman prompts but continues speaking without waiting for an answer “frozen fish sticks _that are still frozen_!” he throws his hands up in the air.

Virgil's head does a weird little head jiggle of confusion and he looks at Remus.

“What, I... What? Those are frozen, you don't eat those frozen” he says baffled.

“Maybe you don't” Remus rolls his eyes.

“Another one” Roman pipes up “is Nutella and tater tots!”

“That one is actually quite good” Logan says everyone looks to him, Remus is beaming. “What? The crispy, savoury, saltiness of the tater tots complement the sweet, chocolate nuttiness of the Nutella, I highly suggest you try it before dismissing it” he says fixing his glasses.

“I keep telling him that! As someone who prefers sweet and salty mixtures you'd think he would try it too!” Remus throws his hands up.

“Sounds like a new menu item” Remy says, that makes Remus whirl in his direction making his chair rock a bit, his eyes shining with excitement.

“Really?” He shouts.

“Totes kid” he says, Patton giggles

“Don'tcha mean 'tots'?” he says giggling even more.

Logan closes his eyes and breathes deeply, Remus looks amused, Roman lets out a soft 'oof' but he's smiling and Virgil is looking like he doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or scowl.

“Anyway, what the heck do you guys want, milkshake wise cause that's what I'm feelin like experimenting with right now. Nothing is off the table go wild.”

“Fuuuuck yes!” Remus shouts again.

Roman groans, Virgil and Logan snicker.

“I dunno how adventurous I am” Patton says.

Remy shrugs. “It's whatever, if you want something on the menu I won't like stop you.”

“Mm, okay I want birthday cake then.”

“Do you have any Crofters on hand?” Logan asks.

“Sure kid.”

Logan's eyes widen a bit, surprise comes off of him, it probably went against his probability.

“Would you perhaps be able to make a milkshake with it?”

“Don't see why not, and hey if it's good I'll so put it on the menu too.”

“I, I. Yes okay, that is”- he clears his throat and adjusts his tie -“acceptable.” 

“Okay me now!” Remus grabs their attention “I've been thinking on this” he says.

“Oh that's always a good sign” Roman groans.

Remus kicks him from under the table making Roman squawk but continues like he didn't just do that. “I want something with pickles!”

“Ew, you are disgusting, how are we twins?” Roman says flailing his arms up, almost hitting Patton in the face he knocks his glasses slightly, Patton puts a hand on Roman's hand gently lowering it and keeping it there. Roman looks at him apologetically.

Remy hums “so like pickle juice incorporated into it or?”

“Yea! But also some chunks I want a crunch!”

“Alrighty you funky little weirdo” he says affectionately.

“I cannot believe you are humouring this... Well, whatever. I'll have peanut butter and chocolate one please” Roman says.

“Pumpkin spiced” Virgil says, Remy hums knowingly.

“I'll be back with those. Have fuun” he says turning towards the kitchen with Emile, who looks really tired.

Things are unusually quiet for a few seconds until Virgil jerks upwards, looking from him to Logan.

“Hey, you have the same glasses!”

Remus and Roman both burst out laughing, Patton snickers.

Logan looks at him and nods slightly while fixing his glasses “yep” is all he says to that.

Virgil is becoming a part of the group, slowly but it's happening he can feel it. He smiles at the fact that Virgil won’t have to be the new kid who's alone at school.

School starts pretty soon, which means this weekend is...

“Oh!” Patton smacks his hands onto the table top startling everyone. “School is starting soon! This weekend, guys guys, this weekend!” he says jumping in place with excitement looking around at everyone then pointedly nudging his head in Virgil's direction.

“Yes Patton, I think that's a wonderful idea” Logan says.

Roman sighs but agrees “of course he can join.”

“Yea! One more for an orgy!” Remus declares.

“You did not have to say it like that, that's gross.” Roman whines.

Remus just shrugs, laughing.

“Anyway...” Patton begins, turning to Virgil he explains. “Okay so we have this tradition we started when we were around eight where the last weekend of the summer we have a weekend long slumber party starting on Friday! We always change who's house it's at, and since you're new we're not gonna make you play host, but do you wanna start coming to them? You're our friend after all!”

Everyone looks at Virgil, anxiety rolls off of him, he's looking around at everyone panicked, trying to find something and apparently doesn't find anything malicious on any of their faces.

“Uh, yea sure. Sounds like fun.”

Patton claps “This is going to be great Virge, you'll see!”


	6. Weekend Whimsey: Friday

It's Friday morning and his friends are going to arrive in just a few hours, so he decides some last minute cleaning should be done before they inevitably wreck it again, he should also wake Remus up to help.

He knocks on Remus' door and walks in without an answer, he was prepared to have to kick his brother awake, but as it seems Remus is already up, well he's awake.

His torso is dangling off the beds edge and his head is almost on the floor; cellphone in hand texting someone.

“How long have you been up?” He asks, crossing his arms. He suspects what the answer is but he'd still like to confirm it. He looks like he hasn't slept at all.

“Since about none of your business o'clock.” Remus sticks out his tongue blowing a raspberry.

Roman looks at him very unimpressed, he's just concerned.

“But if you really need to know, maybe since two.”

“Rem! It's Friday, it's the night we stay up the longest, you're going to be so tired around three what are you gonna do then?”

Remus rolls his eyes “pff whatever I'll just get Patton to zap me with some juicy adrenaline or something.”

“I don't think that's how that works...”

“Sure it does! I've done it before” Remus says flippantly waving his hand in a 'whatever' motion.

“That cannot be healthy. Also don’t use Patton's powers like that.”

“He doesn’t mind!” Remus insists.

Roman gives him a look “I hope you’re right about that” he says and then tacks on “I also hope you haven't been keeping Logan up all night with you.”

Remus looks offended “excuse you, I have other friends too ya'know!”

Roman raises an eyebrow “oh yes, of course you do, but ones outside of our group?” He teases.

“Um yes, I’ve told you about him before, we’ve been friends for like two freaken years.”

Roman looks at Remus with a distasteful expression “oh, right” he drawls “that guy from the internet.”

Remus slumps the rest of his body off of his bed while looking Roman in the eyes the entire time he crosses his arms while sitting up.

“What? Don’t look at me like that! He can be some kind of creeper for all you know! Ever heard of stranger danger?”

Remus just scoffs, waving his hand around.

“You don’t know him Rem” he says softer, Remus sighs with a scowl.

“But I _do_ know him, we’ve video chatted multiple times! I’m not having this conversation with you again” he says with finality.

“Rem, I’m just worried” Roman says, plopping himself down next to his brother, who huffs but leans onto Roman; he looks really tired, and it’s only eleven.

Well, no use sitting here and waiting for him to fall asleep where he sits, they have stuff to do before their friends get here after all.

“We should get up and fix our rooms up some” he says, but they stay where they sit.

Remus hums in displeasure, Roman softly laughs.

“Hey, you brought this upon yourself” he says nudging Remus` shoulder with his own “whose room is going to be for sleeping and who’s room for shenanigans?” He asks.

Roman’s eyes are closed but he can practically feel Remus` suggestive look through his tone.

“Shenanigans? Roman I didn’t know that’s what you had planned for the weekend.”

Roman shoves him again, but off of his shoulder this time “ugh, that is not what I meant and you very well know it!”

Remus just laughs as he lets himself fall to the floor from the shove.

Roman gets up looking around Remus` slightly cleaner than usual room.

“Okay, so sleep in my room.”

Remus rolls his eyes “like that hasn’t been the plan every time there’s a sleepover” he says sarcastically.

Roman ignores that “gather up all the blankets and pillows and bring them to my room for the fort making.”

Remus gets up off the floor to start picking stuff up “shouldn’t we wait for everyone to start building, you know how good Lo is with the structural shit of fort making.”

“Of course we’ll wait for them to build it, we’re just gathering until then, duh.”

“Bluh” Remus mocks.

As they’re gathering stuff from the living room and kitchen the doorbell rings, both boys stop what they’re doing to stare at each other.

Remus drops the snacks in his arms and yells: “I got it!” before Roman has the chance to.

“No you don’t” he says, catching Remus` wrist as he tries to bolt for the door, yanking him to get behind Roman, but Roman miscalculates and sends Remus tumbling into him instead and they both fall to the ground, laughing the whole way.

The doorbell rings again.

They yell at the same time.

“I’m coming!” Roman yells.

“Come in!” Remus yells.

Roman looks at his twin “the door is locked you dingus.”

“Yea but”- he’s cut off by a small `bang` and an even softer “ouch” then a louder “the door is locked.” Remus laughs “-but that.”

“You are so mean to poor sweet Patton” Roman says while untangling himself from their fallen heap on the floor.

“Hey! I didn’t know it was Patton, it could have been anybody.”

Roman just lightly shakes his head, going to open the door to let their friends in.

“Greetings friends! Weekend Whimsy begins now!” He says as he takes in Patton, Logan and Virgil on his doorstep.

“Weekend Whimsy?” Virgil asks with a small amused smile.

“Yes, that’s what we have been calling these weekends as a sort of title for the tradition” Logan explains.

Roman gestures them in with a flourish of his arm.

“I’m so excited! We’ve never invited another person to join us before!” Patton enthuses as they all file into the house.

Remus is still laying on the floor as they enter, Patton and Logan simply walk over him to get to the couches, Virgil however hangs behind not exactly knowing what to do so Roman being the host (well, one of them anyway) motions for Virgil to do the same.

“He’s in the way and I don’t know when he’s going to move, you can just step over him it’s fine.”

Virgil seems amused and follows the others leads and Remus just stays on the ground as he does so.

Roman nudges him with his foot “get up, we need to continue our preparations.”

“Nnnngh, I’m dead I can’t do it” Remus says dramatically, flinging his arm over his eyes.

Roman crosses his arms, time to take out the big guns.

“Logan, can you help my poor dead brother with getting the snacks?” He smirks at Remus as his twin moves his arm slightly to glare up at him.

Logan nods “of course Roman.”

He turns to Patton and Virgil next “can you two help me with the couch cushions?” He asks.

Patton smiles “Sure thing Ro!” He picks up a cushion, as does Virgil; Logan walks towards Remus.

He knows Remus can’t deny Logan anything.

The three walk up the stairs, hands full.

~0~

Logan is staring down at him, arms crossed and eyebrow raised with a smirk.

Is he trying to actually kill Remus? Cause it might just fucking work with that look.

Logan extents his hand towards Remus to help him up.

“Well come on then, you heard the prince.”

Yep, dying. Right now.

Despite the death, he does grab Logan’s hand and Logan helps him up.

They head to the kitchen to gather more snacks, Remus grabs the ones he previously dropped on the way, he doesn’t want to let go of Logan’s hand but he needs to, he needs both hands for holding all of the snackage.

As they approach the stairs to gather with everyone else, Loan stops them with a hand on Remus' shoulder.

“Are you alright Remus?”

“Pssh of course I am, just tired is all, nothing Pat can't fix with a little adrenaline zap!”

Logan looks at him like he doesn't particularly like that answer, but he doesn't push Remus on it either.

“Alright then. I just hope you got some sleep after you told _me_ to go to sleep. Though I am sure Patton will help you out if you ask him, but then again I don't know the health risks of shocking your system like that, it might not be the best solution to be doing, but it would be an interesting test to try out sometime” his hand is at his mouth in thought as he speaks.

“I’ll be your guinea pig if you want Lo” Remus winks, Logan just looks at him with slight confusion.

He adjusts his glasses and clears his throat “we should join the others” he says gesturing to the stairway waiting for Remus to ascend them before following.

When they get to Remus’ room they linger in the doorway to listen on the current debate happening, which happens to be on Disney because of course it is.

“How could you say that about Disney? It’s pure and amazing! How can you besmirch the good name of Disney with your dark theories?” Roman says in bewilderment, hand to his chest looking like someone just bitch slapped a baby in front of him.

“Have we been watching the same movies or do you just have that much of a filter over your eyes?” Virgil retorts.

Roman scoffs offended “ugh your darkness has no room in this topic.”

Patton looks amused by the discussion, gladly listening to the two bickering; he’s the first to notice Logan and Remus standing in the doorway.

“Oh hey guys! What took you so long?”

Roman and Virgil stop their conversation now looking at them too, Remus lifts up the snacks in his arms.

“Sustenance!” He yells out, throwing the snacks like they were confetti.

Virgil startles slightly at the snacksplosion, Remus keeps forgetting that Virgil is new here and that he has yet to know the extent of weirdness that Remus can get to. This is gonna be fun.

“We should start the fort, everyone to my room!” Roman declares marching out of Remus’ room into his own across the hall, everyone trails behind him.

~

Logan and Roman are discussing on how they want the fort to look, Roman suggesting things and Logan shooting it down cause it’s not structurally sound, they do work out the kinks in everything though so they get started on it.

As they’re all doing as instructed he gets a text, feeling the vibrations from his pocket. It can only really be one person considering all his other friends are in this room with him.

He checks the message, yep it’s from Dee.

**Dangernoodle:**

** _-Have you rested yet?_ **

**-ur one to talk! Have you?**

_ **-Mmm, yes.** _

**-go n take a nap Dee I have ways of stayin awake**

** _-Yes, your friend with the ‘powers’ right?_ **

**-excatumando beotch! an anyway we’re doin our weekend thin right now so no sleep until much later!**

** _-Right, I don’t remember you telling me that was starting a couple hours earlier than usual this year._ **

**-mmhm we have a new friend in our group! hes kinda quiet right now though, also fun to try n freak out!**

** _-You’re going to scare him away Remus._ **

**-don worry! Virgie is a tough one I can tell!**

“Remus! Stop texting and continue helping!” Roman chastises, Remus rolls his eyes but complies.

**-Roman is bein a biiiiiiiiitch, talk later!**

He turns his phone completely on silent and stuffs it back in his pocket.

~0~

After Roman tells Remus to put his phone away the fort is progressing with little to no distractions, well no outside distractions cause really they’re all a little prone to being distracted easily.

Like Patton for example stops right in the middle of what he’s pinning down to run to the other room to randomly get his onesies.

“Virgil I don’t know if you have a onesie or not so I brought both of mine!” Patton exclaims holding up both of the pyjamas, one being a grey cat and the other being a calico cat “they’re both cats though.”

“Onesies?” Virgil asks with an amused smirk.

“Yes, it’s tradition on the first night that we all partake in wearing onesie pyjamas” Logan explains.

Virgil hums “you shoulda told me, I would have brought my own.”

“Aw shoot” Patton says snapping his fingers “I could ask Thomas to pick it up for you if you feel more comfortable with yours.”

Virgil waves his concerns away “Nah, that’s alright Pat you brought an extra for me, it’s fine.”

Patton smiles and then they continue with only minor distractions.

~0~

The fort is nearing its completion, it’s slightly larger than they usually make it and Logan made sure of that considering they need to accommodate another body.

The fort goes over Roman’s bed this year (a smart change from previous years he thinks) and it stretches up to the ceiling, sloping back down to go behind the television. The window is blocked off and there’s just enough room between the doorway and the sheet wall to open and close the door without issues.

Inside of the fort they’ve gathered a substantial amount of pillows and blankets to make a very cozy nest of sorts that will fit all five of them comfortably (even though Roman will end up on his bed.)

Patton bounces up from where he’s kneeling to go retrieve the onesies he discarded earlier and once again addresses Virgil with them.

“So Virge. Grey or calico?” He asks waving them around getting Virgil to look them over; Logan watches him speculate on his options.

There’s a ninety six percent chance for the grey one, Logan isn’t surprised about that, it’s darker than the mostly white calico one.

Patton will give him they grey one when he asks, even if it is his favourite of the two.

Virgil points to the calico one.

Huh, well that’s odd.

“Virgil may I enquire as to why you chose the calico?” Logan voices his confusion, everyone looks to him then Virgil, they’ve probably put together that it went against his Probability.

Virgil shifts where he’s sitting “Idunno, I guess I had a feeling that Pat would want the grey one, I don’t really know how else to explain it…”

“Interesting, although true. It is indeed his preferred out of the two.”

Patton smiles wide, Logan narrows his eyes at him.

“Don’t” he simply says and Patton’s smile widens as he looks right at Logan.

“Don’tcha mean preFURed?”

“I do not and you very well know it.”

Virgil snickers “aw c’mon Logan it wasn’t that much of a CATastrophe.”

Patton squeals in joy his hands balled up to his chest and bouncing a bit where he stands.

Remus and Virgil laugh at the puns while Roman amusedly smiles.

These are his friends, he chose them Logan tells himself. He huffs but lets out a small smile of his own anyway.

“You can have the grey one if you want Virgil” Patton says with an encouraging smile, Virgil just gets up and snatches the calico one from Patton’s grasp.

“Nah, it’s alright I like the orange and black patches on this one, kinda Halloweeny” he assures with his own smile.

“Alright” Roman pipes up “there are five of us and only four places to change so someone is going to have to wait” he says as he looks in his closet for his own onesie.

Remus jumps up declaring “not if we’re fast enough!” And then runs to his room to get changed.

Logan supposes he’ll wait.

“You and Virgil can take the bathrooms, I shall wait for Remus to be done, he’ll be the fastest” Logan leaves Roman’s room with Virgil and Patton behind him.

“Thanks Lo” Patton says before turning to Virgil “you can have this bathroom, I’ll go downstairs” and downstairs he goes, Virgil closes the door to the one he just stepped into as Remus exits his room in a possum onesie.

“I just got this one!” Remus says flapping the tail around “pretty nifty huh?”

Logan clears his throat “yes it suits you quite well” he starts and debates whether or not he wants to say his next thought out loud.

There’s an eighty nine percent chance it’ll be taken well so he goes for it.

“You look very, cute.”

Remus’ eyes go wide, a smile grows on his face along with a slight blush, well if he wasn’t cute before he’s most certainly making Logan speechless now.

He adjusts his glasses, awkwardly motioning to Remus’ room “um, may I get dressed?”

Remus jolts, jumping out of the doorway he was blocking the entryway from.

Logan makes his way into the room going right for his bag to get his unicorn onesie, once dressed he opens the door to see the others on the other side waiting for him.

Roman has chosen his Simba onesie for this year it seems.

“Alright, we’re all onesied up we can now start our days activities!” Roman declares.

“Oh, what are we going to do first?” Patton claps in excitement.

Roman puts his hand to his chin in thought “well. We can take a vote” he suggests.

“Pff” Remus scoffs “you gonna suggest that just so you can rig it bro?”

Roman looks offended his hand going to his chest and holding it there for a second before dropping it, sighing “yeah fine. 

Virgil snickers leaning into Logan’s space slightly to ask “how often does he do that for him to be called out on it?”

“Basically whenever there is a vote to be had” Logan responds.

“So since it really doesn’t even matter, what the fuck are we doing?” Remus asks and everyone looks around in thought like the hallway they’re loitering in will give them an idea of something to do.

“We could play video games to start?” Roman says.

“There are five of us this year so we’re going to have to take turns” Logan points out.

“We can rock, paper, scissors to see who sits out first round?” Patton suggests.

“That sounds like a wonderful idea Patton!” Roman says smiling wide, Patton smiles back just as wide.

“Maybe we should decide on what we’re playing before we decide, to see if anyone wants to ‘sit out’ first” Logan says.

“Rock Band!” he twins chorus, smiling at each other while high fiving.

“Um, maybe we should look through the games so Virge knows what the options are?” Patton says to the twins.

“Oh, shit yea. Virgie doesn’t know all the things yet” Remus says as he shoots down the stairs, to no doubt rummage through the games.

“Does he do that often?” Virgil asks.

“Do what often?” Roman answers, heading towards the stairs as well.

“What do you mean ‘do what often’? Maybe, oh… abruptly doing stuff” Virgil says waving his hands towards the stairs.

“All the time, you will get used to it eventually” Logan says.

Patton bounces to Roman’s side, both ready to head down to the living room. Logan motions Virgil to follow them and they all descend the staircase.

Remus is sitting in the middle of the floor in front of the television stand, game drawer open and games scattered all around him.

Roman and Patton go to sit on the love seat closest to where Remus is, Patton leans on Roman as they sit. Logan takes the chair and Virgil sits himself on the floor in front of the couch.

“So, we have a handful of multiplayer games” Roman starts “we have a Wii and a 360” he directs at Virgil.

“We can vote on what we’re gonna play ooor” Remus says looking to Logan, Logan knows what’s coming but he still sighs when Remus finishes his sentence “we could just ask Lo what we’re gonna end up doin.”

Virgil looks towards him in confusion, Roman and Patton look slightly alarmed, all Logan does is sigh once again, well it looks like they should have this conversation before they start anything else, just to ease Virgil’s thoughts. The percentage of Virgil freaking out and not trusting them heightens with every sideways comment about their powers without actually addressing it.

“I think”- Logan starts, adjusting his glasses –“that we should address the metaphorical elephants in the room.”

Patton scrunches in on himself, but nods a little bit anyway.

Virgil is getting increasingly more anxious the longer they stay silent, he’s sure Patton can feel it as the percentages rise.

~0~

Is he finally going to know what’s going on here? Ever since he got here it's been secret after secret, even his dads are keeping things from him! He thinks he should have been told _something_ by now, they've been here for about a week and things just keep getting weirder.

“Okay” Patton says quietly, Roman rubs his back for comfort and Patton gives him a small comforting smile.

“I think it would be best if we go back upstairs for this conversation, my mom might come home soon and the privacy would be nice” Roman suggests.

“Good idea Roman” Logan agrees.

Remus drops the games in his hands gets up and heads to the kitchen, when he returns he has a twelve pack of root beer in his arms.

“We're gonna need these” he says then walks up the stairs, Logan snickers, Patton cracks a smile on his uneasy face and Roman doesn't look surprised in the slightest.

“Alright shall we then?” Logan addresses the group, Roman and Patton nod and get off the couch.

Patton walks over to him holding out his hands to offer help up off the floor, Virgil takes them and he's being hoisted up; Patton lets go with a squeeze before they ascend the stairs. Going into Remus' room once again where the owner of the room has already cracked open a soda and is lounging on the floor leaning against his bed, the others all take a soda from the scattered pile of cans and ripped cardboard before seating themselves.

Virgil cracks his own open in sync with the others opening.

“Should we play a game to ease the conversation along?” Logan asks seemingly directed at Patton who nods in return, “very well a question game then. Twenty questions or two truths and a lie perhaps?”

“Maybe we can do truth or dare” Remus suggests.

“Virgil should know more about us before we start on with truth or dare I think” Roman says.

This is getting more distressing the longer they say things that aren't the things they should be talking about and it's making Virgil a little on edge with the situation.

Patton himself is distressed about all this and that’s not helping Virgil’s thoughts on what they’re about to discuss.

“Yes, that should be reserved for a later time, how about a mixture of two truths one lie and twenty questions?” Logan offers then adds “I'll start.”

Okay finally, some answers it's nerve wracking to think of what they'll say but he's ready to know things.

Logan clears his throat “I am colour-blind, I do not enjoy the flavour of coffee and I have an ability that allows me to analyze probabilities.”

“Jeeze Lo, starting off heavy huh” Remus comments to Virgil's confusion, cause no way can he have what basically amounts to a super power right?

“Of course, I don't like to-” he looks thoughtful for a second “beat around the bush as they say. I did use that one correctly right?”

“Yea Lolo you did” Patton says, he's been awfully quiet and Virgil is eager to know why but he needs to address Logan first.

Virgil shifts thinking, how is he supposed to answer this when he actually thinks that Logan has this power, it makes sense with the context clues he's been able to pick up on but it's also impossible! But what if he says that he doesn't believe Logan and that starts a fight between them? And if he's wrong he'll look stupid...

“Virgil, breathe for me, it's a simple game between friends and you cannot offend me with whatever you say” Logan reassures, ripping him out of his thought spiral, he didn't even notice his breathing rapidly getting faster until Logan said anything.

“Okay so this is crazy but I think the lie might be the colour-blindness?” he asks wincing a bit.

Logan looks slightly surprised, humming.

“Alright, well that's wrong but why did you choose that one?” He inquires.

Virgil runs a hand through his hair shrugging “Idunno, I took a guess on it with the interactions that we've had so far” he says then jolts, looking Logan right in the eyes “wait wait wait, does that mean you actually have a power?!” He exclaims.

Logan nods “yes, I do” he confirms, the others have been quiet during this and Virgil looks around the room at them to gauge their facial expressions, sincerity in all of their eyes.

This is crazy. This can't be real, there's no way!

“Do you have any questions?” Logan directs at him.

Does he have any questions? Yeah he has some freaken questions!

“Uh yea. What the fuck?” He says, Remus laughs loudly at that.

Logan smirks “you're going to have to be a little bit more specific than that Virgil.”

Virgil can't sit still anymore, he gets up and starts to pace “okay okay, um how does it work? How long have you had it for? How did you get it? You're eleven how are you so composed while having a superpower? Who knows of this? Are your parents weird about it? Can you turn it on and off like with a switch? Also you're colour-blind! That must suck!” His pacing and arm flailing stop and he's panting slightly cause he barely took a breath through his whole question tirade; the others are staring at him wide eyed.

“Whoa, calm down a bit there Panic at the Everywhere, deep breaths” Roman says, Virgil looks at him with narrowed eyes and a small amused scowl.

“Let's get the easy one out of the way” Logan begins, adjusting his glasses “yes, colour-blindness is not ideal but I've been living with my Protanopia all my life.”

“Protamawha?” Virgil says blinking.

“Protanopia, it's the type of colour-blindness that I possess, in other words, I have red green colour-blindness.” Logan answers.

“Ookay” Virgil says slowly.

“Essentially I can see mostly blues and yellows though they are different from yours, and I vaguely know what green is.”

“How do you know that if you can't tell what the colours are?”

Patton softly pipes up to answer, “when we found out Lo was colour-blind we did a bunch of our own tests.”

“When did you find out?”

“I was four when we found out, I thought everyone saw colour like that so when I was learning colours I associated the ones I learned with the different shades of yellow and blue that I saw, but now I know red isn’t just another shade of yellow.”

“Jeeze, okay. So the, the powers then?”

“Ah yes the powers” Logan says “I call it my Probability. It gives me future outcomes and percentages on each outcome presented to me and from there I can determine what I want to do with that knowledge, my parents are not weird about it and neither is anyone else in the town, basically everyone knows that I possess it considering how the town is. It's actually fairly common in Charmberry to get a 'gift' from, for simplicities sake a 'fairy god parent' some other residents also have their own personal gifts as well. I have had mine since birth and yes I can control when I want to use it.”

Okay, that's a lot to take in.

He looks to Patton cause from his demeanour with this subject Virgil suspects that he also has a power, he wonders what could be so bad about them for Paton to act like this.

Patton sighs “okay, me now-” he says sitting up straighter, flapping his hands a bit “-my brother is my guardian, I also have a power and I really like spiders.”

Even though they got the abilities thing out of the way he still seems on edge with it.

“I'm guessing you don't really like spiders all that much” Virgil says, Patton puts on a small smile.

“Ding ding ding, I'm terrified of them. So, questions?”

He wants to ask about what happened to his parents but he feels like that might be too intrusive at this time so he goes with the powers instead.

“Can you tell me what your ability is?”

He nods nervously, Roman takes his hand “it's okay, you can take your time” Roman whispers.

“No, no it's alright I'm just a tad nervous” he says while plastering on a smile at Virgil.

Virgil shifts “Pat, whatever it is, I'm sure it won’t change anything.”

Patton takes a deep breath readying himself for the word tornado that he's about to say.

“I control emotions and sometimes I can't control when I do it, if I'm feeling strongly with one emotion it effects everyone around me I don't know how far the reach is and I don't know how to rein it in when it's pure emotion, I'm worried that no one will trust me or want to be my friend if they know I can control them so easily and I'm always worried that I'm somehow manipulating my friends and it tears me up inside thinking about it cause I do use it often and sometimes I'm not sure if it's the right decision I just want to help!” He started tearing up about halfway through his rant and Roman pulls him into a hug from where they're both sitting on Remus' bed.

Remus chugs the rest of his soda and Logan looks slightly uncomfortable.

How is he supposed to react to that? That's a lot of emotion and he can feel it coming off of Patton, no doubt the rest of them do as well, a tear rolls down Roman's face probably because he's the closest to the emotion waves.

Virgil walks up to Patton who's snuggled under Roman's arm, he puts a hand on Patton's shoulder, sadness immediately floods him stronger than when he was just standing there, direct contact _does_ makes it so much more potent.

He clears his throat “hey it's okay, I like you Pat and I don't think you've manipulated your way into my friendship, you're a good guy.”

Patton looks up at Virgil through wet lashes, wiping his eyes on the back of his sleeve “thanks Virge, I'm glad you moved here.”

Virgil smiles, he's glad he moved here too.

Patton perks up and there's some emotional whiplash in the air as his sadness dries up. “Oh! I almost forgot!” he bounces out of Roman's hold to go to his bag to rummage through it, when he faces them again he has a handful of colourful beads. “I updated our friendship bracelets to include Virgil!” He declares handing Virgil one of them.

Four of the beads spell out 'Vivi' the beads next to the lettering are purple then it moves to light blue, red, indigo and green. He stares at it as Patton passes out the other ones to their respective owners.

“Vivi?” Virgil voices, Patton smiles wide at him and nods.

“Mmhm! Everyone has the first two letters of their names on it!” He explains holding out his own arm for Virgil to inspect his, it says 'Papa' on it with the two beads on either side of the word being light blue then moving in to the other colours.

“Oh, so we're all matching then” Virgil muses, Patton nods again.

“Yep! That's how friendship bracelets work, matchy matchy.”

“What will we do with the originals, do you wish to have them back or shall we keep them?” Logan asks.

“You can keep em if ya wanna” Patton says, Logan nods once and stores it in his bag, Patton beams.

“Should we keep playing just to make it even?” Roman asks.

“Only if you wish to share, the point was to get the topic of our abilities out but it would be helpful for us all to learn more about each other” Logan says.

Roman hums, “alright I'll keep it going then, as long as Virgil participates too.”

He shoots Roman a glare, “yea I was planning on it, in fact I'll go next.”

Roman raises his eyebrows “well, someone's a little competitive hmm?”

“Shut up. Okay so a little bit about me, I'm a huge conspiracy theorist-” Roman snickers, Virgil side eyes him but continues “-a traumatic event happened to me when I was younger that I don't remember, and I don't want to know anything else about this town” he finishes and Remus snorts.

“You guys are making these really easy to know.”

Roman nudges Remus with his foot “uh yea, that's the point.”

“Riiiight.”

“Can we ask what you do remember about the traumatic event?” Patton asks.

Virgil shrugs, there's really nothing to say he literally remembers nothing. “Sure, you're not going to get any answers though, I remember nothing. I don't know when people start to retain memories but I have nothing before I was adopted.”

“Humans start to keep memories around the age of two or three” Logan says. “However, if you have experienced trauma at a young age it can start to develop in later years.”

Huh well that makes sense, “Well I was taken away when I was three I was told my birth parents weren't great people.”

“A traumatic event early on like that could also be the cause of your anxiety and selective mutism” Logan says offhandedly.

Virgil startles “how do you know I have those?”

“Observation and clues from what Patton has said about you.”

“That's, kind of freaky” Virgil admits.

“You'll get used to Lo telling you stuff he shouldn't know about” Remus says, “he's just super smart like that.”

Logan looks off to the side adjusting his glasses, Virgil notices that he has a slight blush going on.

Interesting.

Logan clears his throat, “okay so Virgil has shared with us, now you two should say something to end this game” Logan addresses the twins.

Remus from what Virgil has noticed of him so far has been uncharacteristically quiet, even with the small comments here and there.

“I'll go” Roman offers. “My ability is to create things out of thin air, I can play the piano well and-” he pauses then huffs “-and I think I'm gay.”

Remus starts laughing loudly, Roman looks offended as he dramatically scoffs.

“Oh yea cause we all didn't know that last one bro” he says through his giggles.

“Excuse you! We've never actually talked about it before and I'm being vulnerable here!”

“Oh, okay” Remus drawls “cause your _huuuge_ crush on Thomas doesn't tip anyone off.”

“Augh, that doesn't mean anything!” Roman pouts, crossing his arms.

“It's true” Patton pipes up, “there's so many different types of sexualities that like multiple genders.”

“Also regardless of if we already knew this information, Virgil did not and it helps him to know us better which is the point of this game” Logan states.

“True true true” Remus chants. “Okay I guess I'm last to share” he says before downing another soda.

“For once” Roman quips and shoves his brother with the tip of his foot.

Remus throws his empty can Roman's way blindly and hitting Patton's knee instead.

“You missed me, but you hit Patton so that's a worse offence. Prepare to die!” Roman says dramatically while throwing a pillow at Remus' head.

Remus throws an arm over his eyes “oh woe is me! You have slain your poor brother!” he cries out and adds: “smart move, I was going to dethrone you to take over the kingdom.”

“I knew your schemes all along! I was just waiting for the perfect opportunity to take the shot and now everyone can rest easy knowing that the tyrant is taken care of!”

Remus lets out a dramatic 'BLARG' and flops to the floor limp.

Everyone is smiling at the twins antics, Patton giggling as he puts a hand on Roman's shoulder and the other to his own chest.

“Oh thank you brave Prince for protecting my honour, I am forever in your debt!” He then fake swoons in to Roman's lap.

“No need fair maiden, your safety is all I need” Roman says holding Patton up.

Virgil thinks he's gonna enjoy being in this group.

Remus sighs loudly, opening another soda “I'm now a ghost bitch, prepare to be haunted for life.”

Virgil laughs and a snort escapes, his hands fly to his mouth in embarrassment, everyone is looking at him with varying degrees of amusement.

“Aww! Your laugh is so cute!” Patton says while propping himself up on Roman's legs.

Virgil ducks his head down, cute is not a word people usually use to describe him, he changes the subject back to the game.

“So Remus, your turn.”

“Yay, vulnerability time! I have insomnia, unlike my brother I am not super gay, and my gender isn't what it was assigned at birth.”

Everyone is staring at Remus, Roman breaks the silence.

“Wow, no kidding about vulnerability time, all of those are very telling.”

Remus just shrugs “eh, I like to keep things truthful.” He looks to Virgil “so, what's the lie?”

Virgil thinks on it, like Roman said all of these things are very vulnerable.

“I'm guessing you actually are super gay?”

Remus nods “suuuuuuuper gay.”

Virgil shifts, is it rude to ask? Remus seems to sense Virgil's unease, he flips his hand about in Virgil's direction “ask away Virgie, it's all good.”

“How did you know?”

“Hm, well I only started to figure it out sometime last year, some people think I'm too young to know but it just makes sense to me ya'know?” He stops talking looking around the room then looks in to his soda can, “maybe you don't but it just kinda snapped in me one day that I am most definitely not a girl, it's just wrong and uncomfortable so I started to think, well if I'm not a girl can I be a boy instead?” His words aren't said in sadness but in contemplation.

Roman and Patton slide off of the bed to be on either side of Remus to put their arms around him.

“You are a boy Remus” Roman whispers and Patton nods.

“I will physically fight anyone who disagrees” Patton says with conviction, Logan nods to both of their statements.

“As will I, I do not take kindly to, to” he seems at a loss for words as he huffs “stupidity” he finishes.

Remus cracks a smile “but you deal with Roman all the time.”

Roman lets out a high pitched 'ugh!' as he shoves Remus “asshole.”

“Dunce” Remus shoots back affectionately.

A door seems to have opened for Virgil with all this talk of different sexualities and gender identities, he's sitting there quietly, when he hasn't said anything in a while the others start to stare.

“You okay there Virge?” Patton asks.

He nods and looks back to the group “I, I wasn't aware” is all he says, everyone's stares become confused.

“Aware of what?” Logan asks.

“Aware that, that's a thing. I mean it makes sense! If you don't feel like whatever you're told you are then of course you're not that thing.”

“I think we just blew his mind” Roman stage whispers.

“Of course, take my parents for example” Logan says, Virgil looks to him. “Both of my parents are non-binary, which is to say they both go by 'they/them' pronouns and don't conform to gender because they feel that none truly encompasses their being.”

Virgil's eyes widen “that, that's awesome.”

Logan smiles “they are pretty awesome.”

~0~

With all of the hard stuff out of the way Patton feels better, they all know each other more now even if four out of five of them already knew most of it.

Hearing about Virgil's trauma and lack of information about it, it's kinda heartbreaking to think about but he supposes that it's fine considering Virgil didn't seem to mind at all about it.

As all of their secrets are now out in the open, the day continues with fun.

They do end up playing Rock Band first. Roman takes the vocals immediately, Remus goes for the drums, Logan takes lead guitar and Virgil takes the bass parts. Patton is happy to sit out and be Roman's backup singer, even if he wasn't technically in the game it's still fun.

When Valerie comes home at around supper time they order some pizza, they're playing a game when Valerie takes Roman and Remus aside, to all of their confusion.

When they come back it doesn't seem like anything is wrong so no one questions it.

The pizza comes so they put on a movie instead, the atmosphere and emotion in the room is very calming and happy, it makes him even happier.

After eating and the movie they all head into Roman's room for the night.

~ 

Sometime after midnight, they're sleepily watching Lilo and Stitch.

Remus was surprisingly the first to fall asleep, Logan following behind shortly.

“I'm glad I moved here, I don't know the last time I ever had this much fun with a group before” Virgil mumbles with a yawn.

He and Roman scoot a little closer to Virgil.

“We're happy to have you Virge” he whispers.

“Mm ditto” Roman mumbles, snuggling closer into Virgil's shoulder.

Patton smiles also cuddling in closer, and if they fall asleep like that then so be it, they're too comfortable to care.


	7. Weekend Whimsey: Saturday

When Logan wakes he realises that he’s the first to do so, no matter though he’ll just quietly leave the rest to slumber, so he decides to leave the room as to not disturb anyone.

Well, he would _like_ to not disturb anyone but Remus is clinging to him, he sighs reaching for his glasses that he placed securely under Roman’s bed and now to stealthily remove Remus from his extremities but it’s not as easy as he thinks, Remus’ arm is around his torso and his leg wrapped around his own.

He picks up Remus’ arm and as he does Remus snuffles, mumbles and turns himself over to cuddle the body on the other side of him who just so happens to be Patton; who is snuggled up to Virgil.

He gets up and quietly opens the door and closes it behind him, he descends the stairs and walks into the kitchen where Valerie is sitting at the table with Thomas having coffee.

“Hey there Lo” Thomas greets “I’m guessing Patty’s not awake yet?”

“Good morning Thomas, no he is not, he’s stuck in a cuddle pile but I could probably go get him if you want me to” he offers.

“Nah he can wait, no point in waking everyone” Valerie waves off “jam toast for breakfast Logan?”

He sits at the table “yes please.”

“you’re always so polite” Valerie remarks.

“Right?” Thomas agrees with a chuckle “I wonder where he gets it from, cause it’s not from Joan and Talyn.”

“I’m gonna tell them you said that” Valerie laughs back.

Some toast pops up from the toaster, apparently she was already making some, she puts in some more bread and then gives him the toast and jam jar.

“Thank you” he says and starts to butter the toast.

Valerie and Thomas continue chatting while Logan eats, when he starts on his second slice Remus bounces down the stairs, Roman is sleepily trudging behind.

Remus smiles when he sees Thomas and loudly says “oh hey _Thomas_!”

Roman stops right at the bottom of the stairs not stepping into the kitchen quite yet, from where Logan is sitting he can see Roman fix his hair and brighten his face from his sleepy one before striding into the room, Logan rolls his eyes.

“Hello Thomas! Good morning mother!” Roman greets as he goes to the cupboard to fetch the Captain Crunch.

“Good morning my little royals” Valerie says.

“Morning boys, I’m just here to drop off Patton’s inhaler, won’t be intruding on your weekend for long.”

“You can never intrude Thomas, you are always welcome” Roman proclaims.

“He should be down soon” Remus informs, pouring milk into a bowl than putting a handful of cereal in and while he takes his first bite Virgil and Patton come in the kitchen groggily “shee?” Remus says with a mouthful, pointing his spoon in their direction.

They both walk to the table like they’re zombies, it doesn’t help that Patton’s glasses are on the top of his head and not in front of his eyes. Patton is leading them over and when he bumps into a corner of the table he whines at the impact but deposits himself on a chair with no more hassle and then lays his head on the table top.

Thomas snickers “hey kiddo” he lays his hand on Patton’s back, Patton moans sleepily in answer “I brought your inhaler.”

Virgil is staring at Thomas with surprise “you say ‘kiddo’ too” he notes.

Thomas smiles “sure do” he agrees.

“It’s, just that I’ve only heard my Pops say kiddo is all” he says like he feels he needs to explain himself.

Thomas chuckles “where do you think I picked it up from?”

Virgil startles at that “you know my parents?”

“Yeah, they used to babysit me when I was like nine or something, I’m glad you guys are back.”

Virgil looks confused “’you guys?’ I’ve been here before?”

Thomas and Valerie share a confused look themselves.

“Yeah, they didn’t tell you anything? You guys lived here for almost a year when they first got you” Valerie explains.

“Yeah I’m surprised you don’t remember anything, you were almost four when you left” Thomas says.

Virgil’s face contorts into one of contemplation.

_Interesting_ Logan thinks.

~0~

They’re all eating breakfast with different levels of awareness, Virgil is thinking about why his dads haven’t said anything to him about this, though he supposes they haven’t really been super honest with him since moving here, with their secrets and such.

“So” Valerie starts “what are you boys doing today?”

Roman swallows his food before answering “we’re going to go to the quarry to swim.”

“Oh that sounds fun, be careful out there” Thomas comments and stands up, he takes an inhaler out of his pocket, placing it in front of Patton (who is still not wearing his glasses and is slowly munching on toast.) “I’ve gotta go now, but don’t forget this when you go out to play alright Patty?”

Patton mumbles something and nods to Thomas slowly, Thomas only chuckles “someone please inform him when he’s awake” he kisses the top of Patton’s head and goes to leave.

“Farewell Thomas” Roman crows “and worry not! I shall keep dear Patton safe!” He makes an over the top hand sweep; he’s the most extra person Virgil has ever met, and he was best friends with Dee.

Thomas smiles “thanks kiddo, I know I can count on you” and he’s out of the door.

Roman pouts at the word ‘kiddo’, Virgil snickers and Remus snorts while shoving Roman.

“Shut up” Roman huffs.

“Didn’t say anything bro.”

Valerie gathers the dishes with an affectionate eye roll “when are you guys planning on leaving? And do you want me to pack a lunch?”

“Maybe an hour” Roman says.

“Uh” Virgil cuts in, they look his way “we, we can go to the café for lunch… if you guys wanna” he suggests.

“Fine with me” Valerie laughs “I’ll leave the cooking to the professionals then; how are you getting to town center, need a ride?”

“Biking!” Remus chirps.

“I brought my bike” Patton mumbles, he’s leaning his cheek on his hand to keep it upright, his eyes are still closed.

Virgil nudges Logan “is Patton always like this in the morning?”

Logan nods “yes, Patton has a hard time waking up, he’s not much of a morning person but just wait another ten minutes or so and he should be hyper again.”

“Lock up when you leave, I need to head out soon too” Valerie says.

“Alright mom” the twins chorus.

~0~

“Alright!” Roman announces while they’re all putting their shoes on “we have three bikes and five people, who’s doubling up?”

“Well” Logan begins “you and Remus both have pegs on your bikes so logically someone would be with you two, I can go with Remus and Virgil can ride with you.”

He smiles, yes, yes you _can_ go with Remus.

He turns to look at his twin, who has his own smile in place at the suggestion.

Really Roman wonders how neither of them notices the obvious pining; they’re not smooth in any regards, not like he is.

“I’m sorry, we’re doing _what_?” Virgil asks, Roman turns his gaze to the emo.

“You and Nerd Alert there are going to stand on out bike pegs, what of that is confusing to you?”

“Isn’t that, oh I don’t know… dangerous?” he says with snark.

“Well, if you think _that’s_ dangerous, I don’t want to know what you’re going to think about what we’re doing today.”

“You said we’re going swimming” he says accusingly.

“We are; how are you with heights?”

“They’re fine” he replies warily.

“Then you’ll be fine” he pats Virgil’s shoulder.

“Well this bodes well” Virgil mumbles.

“If it makes you feel better, we do this all the time and I can look into today if you would prefer me to” Logan offers.

“Mmnah, that’s alright, you don’t need to do that.”

“Let’s go then!” Roman says impatiently.

“Don’t twist your panties in a knot bro, we’ve got the whole day to do shit” Remus says but he’s he first one out the door excitedly rushing to his bike, leading the rest of them outside.

Roman mounts his trusty steed, his beautiful shimmery red and gold bike.

Virgil is hovering around him, he looks unsure of what to do, so Roman instructs him.

“Alright, so just put one foot on a peg, hold on to my shoulders and then when we take off put your other foot up, got it?”

Virgil doesn’t look too sure about it but he complies.

“I’m gonna die today” he mumbles as he holds on to Roman’s shoulders.

He looks around to find that everyone else is ready to go.

“Let’s ride!” He declares and starts to pedal, Virgil wraps his arms around his neck in surprise, but he settles back quite quickly.

~0~

The bike ride to the forest path that leads to the quarry is a short one, they didn’t really need to ride there, but it’s just easier than going back for the bikes later he supposes.

They ditch the bikes at the tree line out of the roads way to walk the rest of the way there.

Virgil thinks that’s too trusting to leave them there like that, but he surmises that in a town like this it probably doesn’t matter.

Remus and Patton are at the front of the trail leading the way, Virgil and Logan are placed in the middle and Roman takes up the end; he’s swinging a branch around like a sword.

The forest is gorgeous, he doesn’t think he’s ever been in a forest like this before, it just _tingles_ with life and beauty and everything is bright on the trail.

“How long are we going to be walking through here?” He asks.

Logan answers “it goes uphill so we’re going to have to hike some of the way, but it’s going to take approximately fifteen minutes.”

“Approximately? I thought you would have things like time down to the second.”

“I don’t look into things that don’t particularly matter, and anyway I’ve been on this trail a considerable amount of times to know how long it will take.”

“Right… are, are there things in this forest?”

“Things?” Logan inquires.

“Like, creatures” he reiterates.

“Oh yes, plenty. Many a creature lives in these woods, but as long as we don’t stray from the path we should be fine.”

“_Should be_?” Well that’s reassuring.

“You have nothing to worry about Virgil, Patton can calm almost any beast.”

“_Almost_?”

“Yes, there are some that are… more aggressive and feral than others and feelings don’t do a whole lot to them, but they usually don’t stalk around this part of the forest.”

“_Usually_? Logan man, you gotta stop using words like that.”

“My apologies, would you be more at ease if I look into our trek there?”

It would be, but he doesn’t want to seem like he’s using Logan, even though he did offer to do it.

Roman slings his arms over their shoulders, scoffing.

“Pssh, you don’t need the psychic to tell you everything will be fine, for _I_ am here to protect you all” he boasts.

Logan looks slightly annoyed as he knocks Roman’s arm off of him. “Not a psychic” he simply replies.

Roman sticks his tongue out at Logan.

Virgil shrugs Roman off as well which makes Roman pout.

“And who do you think you are? A knight? A prince maybe?” He asks sarcastically.

“Precisely!” Roman crows with a flourish of the sword branch.

Virgil snorts “alright there Princey.”

“I know you’re being sarcastic, but I’ll take it.”

The banter really took his mind off of the maybe doom of the forest because Remus yells out to them.

“I can see the parting of the trees! We’re almost there!” and then he sprints off.

“Remus! Watch your step you can fall!” Patton yells out, rushing after the reckless boy.

They break through the tree line not long after and the view is just, amazing.

The quarry is surrounded by cliff from all sides and the forest on the other side seems never-ending.

From where he’s standing he can see a slope of rocks that lead down into the cliff, probably the way to the water he deduces.

The others start taking off their top clothes to reveal bathing suits underneath, Remus is the first one done; Roman tries to grab Remus’ wrist to stop him from rushing off again but he’s too slow.

Remus runs at the cliffs side and jumps off, a few seconds later and too long for Virgil’s liking he hears a splash.

Oh. _That’s_ why Roman asked about the heights thing.

He’s never jumped off a cliff before, even if there is water at the bottom.

Patton giggles at Roman’s squawk at his brother.

“Remus! We were going to go down to-“ he sighs “-he can’t hear me.”

“Guys” he gets their attention and they all turn to him “I’ve… never done something like this before, is there, like anything specific I should know to not hurt myself?”

“Don’t second guess yourself, just do it” Roman says.

“_Also_” Logan interjects “go feet first and make sure you jump far enough from the cliffs side and you’ll be fine.”

“Right right, all that safety stuff too” Roman flippantly says.

He nods in understanding.

Okay, it’s no biggie; just jumping off a cliff is all.

Oh man.

The other three move into a line at arm’s length from each other at the ledge.

Patton waves him over “c’mon we’re gonna jump together, stand next to me but at arm’s length kay?”

He lines up with them and looks down into the water, Remus is almost on the other side of the quarry looking up at them from his floating position on his back; he spits water out towards them.

Roman looks excitedly at them “okay, we back up and on the count of three we run and jump off the edge.”

Oh man, okay no second guessing, just do it.

“One.”

Ah shit.

“Two.”

He can do this.

“_Three_!”

And they’re running, they’re at the edge now and he pushes himself off the side as he jumps to get more air as to not hit the side of the cliff.

There’s butterflies in his stomach going down, it’s exhilarating, the wind rushes at him as he falls fast towards the water, he lets out a _whoop_ of pure exhilaration as the adrenaline buzzes through him and before he knows it he’s hitting the waters cold surface.

Under the water is slightly disorienting for a few seconds but he can see which way is up from the blaring sun so he kicks his way up, it takes a bit longer than he expected it to be and he almost runs out of breath before breaking the surface with a gasp.

Everyone seems to have come up at the same time, all gasping and laughing, Virgil is right there with them.

“H-holy _shit_”- he breathes, letting out another laugh- “that was _insane_!”

Everyone is looking at him with smiles, Remus splashes him “city boy over here” he stage whispers with a goofy accent. “You like the adrenaline don’tcha?” He adds.

“It’s definitely different from what I’ve ever done before, it’s exciting and… and really fun” he smiles at his group of friends softly “I, I don’t think I’d _ever_ have done something like this without you guys, so… thanks.”

“Aww Virge!” Patton coos, swimming towards him to give him a hug.

Roman shoves him but he’s smiling too “you’re a bit of a sap huh Stormcloud?”

“Shut up” he says splashing Roman in the face.

“Splash fight!” Remus yells sending a large one at Roman as well.

“Oh it is on” Roman growls playfully going to splash his twin back, but before he can a wave comes at him from Logan who just smirks at Roman’s glare “oh what? Is it attack Roman o’clock or something?”

“Maybe” Logan goads.

“You want some of this, nerd? I’ll wreck you.”

Logan raises an eyebrow “come at me” he narrows his eyes with an amused but cocky smirk “_bitch_.”

“_Ohhhh_!” Remus hollers, hovering a hand over his mouth and the other air dunking at Roman.

Roman launches himself at Remus rather than Logan and dunks him underwater.

Remus comes up laughing and rushing over behind Logan for cover.

“You can’t use him as a shield!”

“And why not huh?”

“Because that won’t save you!” he bellows then dives under the water, he swims quicker than Virgil thought he would cause in the next second both Logan and Remus are pulled under.

He and Patton are watching the spectacle with twin looks of amusement.

Patton looks at him mischievously “hey, wanna team up?”

Virgil smirks “definitely.”

~0~

When they emerge from under the water Virgil and Patton are gone.

Remus and Roman are splashing each other and making a general ruckus, but Logan is looking around trying to spot the other two.

He suddenly feels something grasp his ankle and he’s being pulled under again, but it’s not Roman this time.

The twins splashing ceases and their voices stop as well except for a muffled: “Logan? Virgil? Patton?”

He notices Patton smiling at him under the water as he and Virgil swim towards the twins.

They both yelp as they’re pulled under.

He swims up to the surface; Virgil and Patton soon follow.

They’re all gasping.

“I’ve never held my breath for that long before, it didn’t even hurt, a bit uncomfortable though” Virgil remarks.

“Patton probably made you calm enough to slow your heartbeat so you can stay under longer, he does it to himself all the time” he explains.

“He did kind of explain that to me, I just didn’t think it’d be that effective.”

“You dissin my power?” Patton cheekily says.

Virgil puts his hands up in front of his chest in mock surrender “oh no of course not.”

Patton nods “that’s what I thought” his tough façade breaks quickly into laughter though and he can’t keep the ‘scary’ face up any longer.

Roman and Remus come spluttering up.

“You two were under there suspiciously long” he says.

“Dunno what yer talkin ‘bout” Remus says looking to Roman “Roman? You know anything?”

Roman shakes his head “nope, no idea at all.”

“Oh no” Patton whispers “they’ve formed a truce.”

“It appears so” he replies.

“I’m guessing we’re all doomed then” Virgil says.

“Quite possibly, they are a force not to be reckoned with when teamed up.”

“Great, let’s bring it.”

Roman and Remus’ smiles are wide and asking for a challenge.

With that, an all-out water war begins.

~

The water war lasted for a while and even though he doesn’t think there was a victor, the twins are sure that it was them.

At the moment they’re back up on the cliff, drying off and basking in the sun.

Virgil’s stomach growls “heh, I didn’t eat much this morning” he says.

“It’s quite alright, should we head over to the café?” he directs the question at Virgil.

“Uh, yea can I just borrow someone’s phone to call my dad?”

“Here” Patton says handing Virgil his charm infested phone.

“Thanks” Virgil says as he gets up to walk off a little ways to talk.

When he gets back he affirms “yea we can go now.”

So they head back into the forest.

About six minutes on the trail they hear a loud howl shriek, they all pause in place.

“That’s not what I think it is… is it?” Patton asks uneasily.

“Can’t be, they don’t come to this part of the forest” he says, but he’s not confidant that it’s not one.

“_Usually_” Virgil whispers.

“Usually” he agrees turning to face everyone. “Okay we all know this, but Virgil does not, I am fairly sure that there is a Shadow Mimic not too far from us, do not believe anything anyone says unless you can see us speaking the words and try to stay out of its line of sight, we can’t fight it, the only thing that will kill it is an immense amount of fire. We’ll be safe once we hit the road but we need to be cautious until then.”

Virgil’s eyes are wide, he’s scared and Logan can’t fault him for that, he’s pretty sure all of them are scared.

They try to quickly and quietly make their way through the forest; the howls are nearing them though and everyone is on edge.

He’d look into it if it would be beneficial, but there are too many variables to go through to come up with a confidant and precise estimation to safety, so they have to go in blind and Patton can only do so much against a Shadow Mimic .

It’s close to them, but they’re almost at the end of the forest, just a bit further.

He looks behind them to where the latest howl came from and his stomach drops, it’s not far, he can see it in the distance and they’re _fast_; they just need to be faster.

They need to go _right_ _now_; he can see where the trees end, they can make it.

He turns to everyone so they can see his lips move and tells them as calmly as he can to run for it.

They sprint to the forests end and all of them make it except Roman who trips and gets caught in an upturned root.

Logan freezes looking at Roman’s scared face, he doesn’t know what to do, his brain isn’t working, _why isn’t his brain working_? He can feel Patton sending out calming vibes to the creature to try and stall it, but that’ll only work at half power on a Shadow Mimic.

Remus goes to rush back in to help Roman and Logan’s brain boots up enough to grab hold of Remus to keep him out of the forest.

“You can’t fight it, you have to trust that Roman will get out” he tries to logic his way through to Remus but Remus is just squirming and screaming at him to let go.

“Ah fuck” Virgil hisses and sprints into the forest.

~0~

“Roman!” He yells as he runs towards his friend, he’s not sure what he’s doing but his fight instincts kicked in and now he’s going to what? Throw down with a fuckin Shadow Mimic? Whatever the _fuck _that is!

Roman looks to him in wide eyed fear “Virgil?” he squeaks.

He drops to his knees in front of Roman’s captured foot to help him escape.

“C’mon, _c’mon_” he growls as both he and Roman struggle to get the root to yield.

“Virgil it’s almost here” Roman’s voice is thick with fear.

“Just focus!” He snaps.

The root comes undone and as Roman’s foot is freed the Shadow Mimicpounces.

His instincts rush to him again and without thinking he turns and holds his hands out, palms towards the monster.

A wave of heat hits him as a large wall of fire engulfs the creature, it shrieks as it’s burned into ash.

He’s shaking.

_What in the actual fuck was that?_

He looks at his palms then to Roman who is also shaking.

“You, you _saved_ me” Roman says in awe.

“Yeah well, what was I supposed to do? Let you die? Not on my watch Princey” he replies; Roman surges forwards to hug him.

The others are now rushing to them, Remus drops harshly to the ground to tackle his brother in a teary hug.

“You fuckin idiot! Watch where you’re running!” he clutches at Roman.

“Sorry, sorry.”

“We should go” Patton murmurs looking around and fidgeting “you guys okay?”

“Shaken and confused, but sure” he says.

“We can look into your new found power after we leave the forest, Shadow Mimics sometimes travel in packs” Logan says.

Well that’s enough for him to get up, he pulls the twins up with him, Roman limps a bit as they walk to the bikes.

Remus hitches on Roman’s bike this time around so he doubles up with Logan, it doesn’t change anything, they’re all still too shaken up to talk.

~

He can’t stop thinking about the fire, how it just came out of his hands at such a forceful power, how it immediately went out when the threat was gone and how nothing around it burned, like the only thing that can be affected was the thing that he wanted it to.

He has no idea how it happened or how he did it or even if he can do it again.

They arrive at the café in what feels like no time at all, he must have been so lost in thought that he wasn’t aware of his surroundings.

They walk through the doors and Pops greets them from behind the counter “hey kiddos! Hungry?”

“Uh” he flounders, not anymore he’s not.

They all share the same sentiment that Virgil does if their faces are anything to go by.

Pops gives them a concerned look but Logan interjects before he can say anything.

“Yes, we are. We need to regain our energy after swimming for so long.”

Who knew Logan was a good liar?

Everyone nods along to Logan’s statement.

“Alright” Pops says a little unsure but he doesn’t press them “just take a seat and I’ll be there in a sec” he tells them and then steps into the kitchen to no doubt talk to Dad about their weird behaviour.

The group trudges their way to their regular seats at the bay window, taking the same spots as last time.

Dad and Pops come to their table and hands each of them a menu.

“We just made these up, we’re just about ready for a grand opening” Dad informs, he looks at Virgil and he feels like he’s being scrutinized from behind those sunglasses.

“Your hands are really red Pumpkin, you okay?” He asks.

He looks down at his hands, just now noticing the slight sting from them.

“Uh yeah, just fell. I guess I scraped up my hands…”

He and Pops glance at each other, Pops’ face is indistinguishable but Dad looks agitated.

“So what’cha boys gonna have today?” He asks in a tone that doesn’t fit the look he was just wearing.

They all order their food, and they wait in relative silence when his parents walk away; only talking at a whisper at most and not at all when either parent is in the room.

When the food does come he feels hungry again, like the smell and sight of it just made him remember that he was.

It seems like most of them feel the same cause their whispered words are replaced with eating; except Roman who only picks at his food and barely gets any of it done.

~0~

Things have been kind of tense since the Shadow Mimic situation, even through their little whispery conversations.

He knows, he can feel every ones moods even if they don’t fully show them, but he can feel them as if they were spoken out loud.

After their meal they bike back to the twins house, they’re all a little bit loosened up when they get to Roman’s room in the fort where it’s comfortable and safe from prying eyes and ears.

Remus and Logan start up a video game, Virgil sits to watch but Patton can tell his mind is elsewhere.

And Roman isn’t even trying to pay attention, he’s sitting knees up to his chest staring off into nothing; wallowing in self-hatred.

He’s had enough of the solemnness; even Remus is muted, still shaken up from almost losing his brother.

“Hey guys” he says and his voice is quieter than he meant it to come out.

The game pauses and all eyes are on him now.

Oh gee.

“Um can I…” should he just let it be?

“Go ahead Patton” Logan encourages.

“Can I lighten the mood a bit, does anyone want that?”

“Please” Roman says.

Virgil shrugs.

“I don’t see why not” Logan says.

“Oh yea I don’t see what can go wrong there” Remus says sarcastically “but yea sure, fuck us up Patty!”

He smiles but it’s not in amusement, Remus is right, but he closes his eyes anyways to focus on lighting the air in the room to take everyone’s worries away.

It instantly has an effect and both Roman and Virgil sigh out in relief.

Remus turns to Virgil “fire powers huh?”

“Yeeeah, I don’t know what happened there, I was working on instinct and feeling”- he looks to Ro -“I couldn’t let anything bad happen and it just… overtook me.”

“The sensible thing to do would to be to ask your parents” Logan says “but I have a feeling you don’t want to do that.”

“Not yet, no… I, I heard my dad and uncle arguing about me the other day and I’m not sure what it was about.”

“Well that’s concerning” he says.

“You should snoop” Remus suggests.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea” Virgil retorts.

Remus shrugs “I would, I do it all the time.”

Roman snorts and shoves Remus “yea that’s cause you’re a creep.”

Remus laughs “guilty!”

“Can we rest for the rest of the day?” He asks.

“Yeah, I don’t think I’m down for anymore adrenaline today” Virgil agrees.

“We can research your power tomorrow if we’re up for it” Logan proposes.

“And where would we go for that?” Roman asks.

“The library of course” Logan replies.

“Of course” Roman deadpans.

So they do basically nothing for the rest of the day, movies and video games and an early bedtime.

~0~

He runs down the dark corridor to the main chambers in a rush, the large cavern is illuminated with candles, The Leader is at the center, they’re doing something at the altar.

“How did the Shadow Mimic fair?” His Leader asks of him, he gulps.

“It’s dead” he flinches at his own words.

“_What_?” The Leader growls.

“Um, the boy killed it, big ‘ol fireball shot right out of his palms.”

“Damn it” The Leader hisses “he’s coming in to his powers, we must make haste, get out of my sight; I need to think.”

He scurries away quickly to let his Leader plot.

**Author's Note:**

> Why do they do my tags like that, I put them in a specific order and then they fuck it... Rude.


End file.
